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Andrew Feinberg
White House Correspondent
Labour’s biggest donor Lord Waheed Alli has found himself at the centre of a political row over the acceptance of gifts and hospitality by senior MPs in the party.
In the first controversy to hit Sir Keir Starmer’s new government, questions have been raised over Lord Alli – the business executive who has donated some £700,000 to the party over the past two decades – being handed a Downing Street pass.
In a row dubbed “passes for glasses”, it has emerged that Lord Alli had gifted the Sir Keir eyewear and work clothing worth £18,000, clothes for his wife Lady Victoria Starmer, and a £10,000 donation to the PM’s chief of staff Sue Gray’s son Liam Conlon’s campaign to become a Labour MP.
Despite Sir Keir insisting parliamentary rules were followed, the PM, Rachel Reeves and Angela Raynor have now all said they will not accept any more free clothes from donors as the row threatened to overshadow the party’s annual conference.
Allies of Lord Alli – aged 59 and reported to have a fortune of around £200m – describe him as a lifelong Labour backer who “does not want anything” in return for his donations.
“He absolutely hates all the attention. It’s been blown completely out of proportion,” one ally told The Times, while another insider told The Guardian: “Waheed was an important part of Keir’s team during the election campaign, and so it was felt natural that he should get a [Downing Street] pass.
“The thing was, Waheed didn’t really know what he was doing there, so he handed it back.”
People involved in Labour’s election campaign told the outlet that Lord Alli not only helped fund it but also took on a managerial role with staff, often helping to smooth over the kind of tensions that can hamper an intense election drive.
Lord Alli’s upbringing
Described as a person “who get things done”, Lord Alli was born in south London to a Trinidadian mother, who worked as a nurse, and Guyanese father, who was a mechanic. While his mother was Hindu, Lord Alli took up his father’s Muslim faith.
After leaving school aged 16 with nine O-levels, Alli took a £40-per-week role as a researcher on the specialist Planned Savings magazine, which led to him being offered an investment banking job with the firm Save & Prosper, later establishing himself as a City consultant reportedly charging £1,000 per day.
Until the age of 26, he is reported to have handed 80 per cent of his take-home pay to his family.
Seeking a new challenge, he then launched the media company Planet 24 with Bob Geldof and Charlie Parsons. He and Parsons, who also became life partners, were behind a new wave of television shows, including The Big Breakfast and The Word, and in the late 90s were stalwarts on the media set, throwing parties at their Kent mansion.
With this experience and after helping with Labour’s 1997 campaign, Lord Alli was sought out by Mr Blair for advice on young people, and was nominated for his government’s 25-strong Panel 2000, dubbed “the committee for cool”, to help on presenting the UK’s “Cool Britannia” image abroad.
Lord Alli, who has said his “heart and soul” are devoted to Labour, told the Financial Times in 2011 that his politics were “the politics of sexuality, or equality,” and was reportedly introduced to the party by his neighbour, Labour MP Emily Thornberry.
Upon his appointment to the House of Lords, the BBC described him as “the antithesis of the stereotypical ‘establishment‘ peer – young, Asian and from the world of media and entertainment”.
As a peer, he used his position to spearhead the battle over the repeal of Margaret Thatcher’s notorious Section 28 legislation which had banned local authorities from “promoting homosexuality”, and advocated for lowering the age of consent for gay men from 18 to 16.
Later becoming chair of online fashion giant Asos, before selling half of his stake to set up a firm which purchased the rights to Beatrix Potter’s work, Lord Alli has continued to have close involvement with the Labour Party and those involved in it, despite considering sitting as an independent during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
Lord Alli donated £26,500 to leadership hopefuls Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall in 2015, and £10,000 to Owen Smith during his challenge the following year, before ultimately handing £100,000 for Sir Keir’s campaign.
His generosity has not been merely political. In 2023, Lord Alli gave his friend and Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh an interest-free loan of £1.2m so she could move house to care for her sister Margaret, the party’s first female general secretary, who died last year following a brain tumour diagnosis.
And since 2022, he is reported to have been central to raising funds for the Labour party, taking an unpaid role as chair of general election fundraising, with his team meeting up to four times a week at his London penthouse prior to the election.
“The secret of his success in television was that he could make A-list presenters and big shot producers feel comfortable around him because he does not want anything from them,” his former partner Parsons told The Times. “The same is true of politicians.”
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