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Policy Exchange Insider Labour MP Who Attacked Islamophobia Definition Privately Told Baroness Warsi Think Tank is ‘Dangerous’
A senior Labour MP and co-author of a new Policy Exchange report attacking attempts to define Islamophobia privately told former Conservative Cabinet Minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi that the Conservative think tank is a "dangerous" outfit with extremist tendencies that he is trying to "temper" with his presence.
The conversation between Baroness Warsi and Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, came to light in leaked WhatsApp messages seen exclusively by Byline Times.
Mahmood is currently a senior fellow at Policy Exchange. According to the parliamentary register of interests, he received regular payments from the think tank between April 2019 and March 2022, totalling more than £50,000.
His private criticisms of Policy Exchange cohere with previous reports by Byline Times revealing the connections of multiple staffers with far-right anti-Muslim and antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Several Policy Exchange fellows, including the co-authors of the new Islamophobia report, are linked to a supporter of the so-called ‘Great Replacement’ theory which has inspired several far-right terrorist attacks, including in Christchurch and Texas.
The think tank’s current head of security once described “Zionists” as “the enemy” alongside all the mainstream political parties.
Michael Gove, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Secretary, gives a speech at a Policy Exchange event. Photo: Tommy London /Alamy
Policy Exchange
The messages seen by Byline Times were sent to a WhatsApp group of senior cross-party Muslim politicians in the UK. They contain a series of heated exchanges between Mahmood and Baroness Warsi, a former Conservative Party chair.
The private messages were prompted by Mahmood’s co-authorship of a new report published by Policy Exchange – 'A definition of Islamophobia? Old Problems Remain, As New Problems Emerge’ – which states that Islamophobia is being weaponised to silence free speech.
In a foreword to the report, former Home Secretary Sajid Javid equates a working definition of Islamophobia created by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims with “blasphemy law by the backdoor” that would also potentially undermine counter-extremism work.
This was denied in 2019 by Labour MP Wes Streeting as Co-Chair of the APPG on British Muslims. At the time, both the then Chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council to Number 10, Martin Hewitt, and then Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, the Metropolitan Police’s Head of Counter-Terrorism Policing, said that they believed basic refinements of the APPG definition would be sufficient.
In the WhatsApp exchanges, Mahmood told Baroness Warsi multiple times that, if he had not joined Policy Exchange – one of the most influential lobbying groups around the UK Government – it would be a far worse organisation.
He claimed that he only joined the right-wing think tank to “keep an eye” on it from within, due to its “dangerous” nature.
Keeping an Eye
In the messages, Mahmood vigorously disputes Baroness Warsi’s criticisms of his role in the Policy Exchange report. Baroness Warsi complains that Mahmood had not raised his concerns directly with the APPG on British Muslims despite several invitations to do so. Mahmood rejects this criticism.
“At least twice I have personally asked you to engage and you did not take up the open invite offered to all parliamentarians to submit evidence,” the peer writes in one message.
“And when I have addressed specific issues you’ve given me some wierd [sic] answer about how you working with PX [Policy Exchange] is in the best interests of the community because they (PX) would be far worse without you tempering/keeping an eye on them.”
In his responses to Baroness Warsi, Mahmood does not deny this conversation.
Instead, he writes: “I respect you have your opinions with PX's report. Although moving forward, I am looking to having a more meaningful conversation with you.”
In a further message, Baroness Warsi writes: “I saw you a few weeks ago at the Big Iftaar and I spoke about this very issue. You didn’t ask for a discussion nor give any indication that you were interested in working collaboratively.”
She also writes that she was told “PX would be far worse without you being there and you needed to be on the inside. You gave the clear impression PX were dangerous and they [sic] you were keeping an eye on them – at no point did you defend PX”.
Neither Baroness Sayeeda Warsi nor Khalid Mahmood responded to Byline Times’ requests for comment.
Although Mahmood's private characterisation of Policy Exchange as “dangerous” is at odds with his public stance, it is an accurate description of the think tank’s affiliations.
'Great Replacement’ Ties
Two of Mahmood’s co-authors of the new Policy Exchange report – Sir John Jenkins and Dr Martyn Frampton – have worked closely with Dr Lorenzo Vidino, a ‘white genocide’ believer who once worked for the same far-right conspiracy theorist whom former Prime Minister David Cameron called an “idiot” for describing Birmingham as a Muslim "no-go zone".
Dr Frampton also collaborated with Dr Vidino on a major anthology about the Muslim Brotherhood published in 2013, to which he was a contributor.
Former UK diplomat Sir John Jenkins spoke alongside Dr Vidino at a 2017 event hosted by him at George Washington University, where he heads up the programme on extremism. Dr Vidino was previously commissioned by Sir John to produce a paper and consultative briefing for the UK Government review of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Dr Frampton was also hosted by Dr Vidino in 2018 at George Washington University to speak about his own book on the Muslim Brotherhood.
As Byline Times has previously revealed, Dr Vidino is on record advocating the far-right Great Replacement theory – an ethno-nationalist theory warning that an indigenous (white) European population is being replaced by non-European immigrants through a programme of reverse-colonisation, according to the Counter Extremism Project.
In 2005, when asked if Europeans were witnessing “the end of Europe” by FrontPage magazine (the far-right publication of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black activist David Horowitz), he said: “Europe as we knew it 30 years ago is long gone. Demography doesn’t lie: in a couple of decades non-ethnic Europeans will represent the majority of the population in many European cities and a large percentage of them will be Muslim.”
According to Georgetown University’s Bridge Initiative, Dr Vidino is well-known for promoting “conspiracy theories about the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe and the United States” and “is connected to numerous anti-Muslim think tanks in the United States and Europe, and has published in various anti-Muslim outlets”.
From 2002 to 2005, Dr Vidino was a senior analyst at Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism, identified by the Centre for American Progress (CAP) as a top player in a global anti-Muslim “misinformation” network “orchestrating the majority of misinformation about Islam and Muslims in America today”.
Emerson played a leading role in establishing the Muslim Brotherhood conspiracy theory through cherry-picking and misrepresentations of key documents. According to CAP’s online database of anti-Muslim hate groups, he has a reputation “for fabricating evidence to substantiate his ravings about Muslim extremism”.
In 2015, Emerson was notoriously ridiculed by then Prime Minister David Cameron as “a complete idiot” for calling Birmingham a Muslim-controlled "no-go zone".
Byline Times also previously revealed that in 2010 Policy Exchange’s head of security and extremism, Dr Paul Stott, described “Zionists” as “the enemy” alongside Islamists, “Neo-Conservatives, New Labour [and] the Con-Dems”.
In 2021, Dr Stott was commissioned by the Sweden Democrats, a neo-Nazi political party boycotted by Israeli Government officials due to its antisemitic tendencies, to produce a report claiming the existence of a conspiratorial alliance between the Muslim Brotherhood and European political leaders.
These extremist affiliations fundamentally discredit the integrity of Policy Exchange’s research on Islamophobia and Muslim communities.
Policy Exchange did not respond to requests for comment.
The European Congress of Families and The International Organization for the Family
Conservative MPs Miriam Cates and Ranil Jayawardena attended the European Congress of Families conference (ECF) which ran from 15-17 September 2023 in Croatia, as speakers in a programme that included members of far-right parties, organisations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as hate groups, and several of those named in a European Parliament report into the funding of religious extremism with dark money from the US radical right and Russia.
Both Cates and Jayawardena were outliers at the ECF for not having publicly called for a rolling back of sexuality and reproductive rights, and they have distanced themselves from the more strident positions of the recently rebranded and Russian-funded World Congress of Families.
However, Cates' speeches at other conferences and the manifesto of her New Social Covenant initiative include some of the same motifs used by the anti-gender movement.
In the Background: a Hundred Million Dollar Network
Tip Of The Iceberg (TOTI), a report published in 2021 by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights, assembled financial data between 2009 to 2018 to detail how more than $707million was funnelled into a network of more than 50 anti-gender actors operating in Europe with the intention of rolling back human rights in sexuality and reproduction under the guise of supporting the traditional family.
A key organisation in this network bridging the US and Russia is the World Congress of Families (WCF) which rebranded in 2016 with its umbrella organisation the International Organization for the Family (IOF). One of ECF’s headline speakers was the IOF's chairman Brian Brown, other speakers included IOF members Keith Mason and Allan C Carlson, WCF founder and International Secretary.
Brian Brown, who is also on the board of another key organisation, CitizenGO, is on TOTI’s list of the thirteen most influential individuals in the anti-gender network. TOTI’s section on Russian “laundromats” covers Brown’s involvement with WCF board member Alexey Komov.
Komov serves as the External Relations Representative of the Russian Orthodox Church , is a board member of CitizenGO and is the focal point for international projects at the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, since its founder, the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, was banned from Europe and much of the West due to sanctions after the annexation of Crimea. US intelligence services considered Malofeev to be “Putin’s right arm for operations of political interference in Europe”.
In total the report identifies $186,400,000 of Russian funding for anti-gender activities with $77,300,000 from the St. Basil the Great Charitable Foundation.
Demonstrating its close ties to Putin’s regime, in 2014 the WCF was due to gather in Moscow, inside the Kremlin Palace, but because of international sanctions, the WCF rebranded the event as the “Large Families and the Future of Humanity Forum”, while keeping the same location, date, speakers and participants.
The largest European funder of anti-gender activities is the Jerome Lejeune Foundation (JLF) which spent $120,167,509 in the time period covered by the report. David G Lejeune who established the foundation’s US chapter, and was its President from March 2017 to February 2023, was a speaker at the ECF conference.
Another ECF speaker, David Ibáñez, represented Political Network for Values (PNfV), an ultra-conservative platform that connects far-right politicians and activists from Europe, Latin America, US and Africa, and is yet another influential organisation named in TOTI, receiving funding from the JLF.
PNfV has hosted events sponsored by organisations designated as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups by the SPLC, according to an analysis by Ipas, an international organisation working to advance sexual and reproductive rights. Among the groups are Family Watch International, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), The Center for Family and Human Rights and the IOF. ADF provided $23,300,000 in funding to the network identified by TOTI.
Sharon Slater, the head of Family Watch International and a PNfV board member, was revealed by openDemocracy to have been deeply involved in the political organising behind the infamous Uganda law that criminalises LGBTQ+ people.
PNfV has close links to Hungarian politics, having previously been chaired by a former minister and member of the country’s parliament, Katalin Novák, who left her position with the organisation in 2022 to be sworn in as Hungary’s President. In 2020 the Hungarian Government provided $140,000 to PNfV and the next PNfV Trans-Atlantic Summit in November 2021 was held in the Hungarian Parliament.
Another speaker, Nicola Speranza, is Secretary General of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations, which is listed by TOTI as an anti-gender organisation and has produced joint reports with the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM). The ECPM has hosted events against abortion, surrogacy and in support of “reintegrative therapy”, a rebranded version of gay conversion therapy.
Diego von Stauffenberg, founding member of Crossroads Pro-Life, was at the ECF conference representing Rivada Networks, a US-based communications technology business financially backed by Peter Thiel.
Right Wing Connections
The ECF conference featured numerous European politicians from the hard and far-right: Margarita De La Pisa Carrión, Victor González Coello de Portugal and Hermann Tertsch are all members of the Spanish far-right Vox Party which is named by TOTI as a beneficiary of anti-gender funding and is described as the “political expression” of CitizenGO and HazteOir, “one of the most important organisations on the far-right political spectrum” due to its extensive social media activity.
Three members of Georgio Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party, Eugenia Maria Roccella Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities, Nicola Procaccini MEP, and Cinzia Pellegrino of the Italian Senate also spoke at the event.
Croatian MP Ladislav Ilčić, whose party openly advocates for a ban on abortion and artificial reproduction, was also a speaker at the conference. He has claimed “health education in schools is used to introduce homosexual propaganda” because “It teaches the children that homosexual acts are equally valuable and natural as heterosexual”, continuing “The Church condemns behaviour of homosexuals as evil and it has the right to say it.”
Also speaking was another Croatian MP, Vesna Vučemilović from the Homeland Movement, a coalition of minor right-wing and far-right parties which opposes abortion and same-sex marriage.
Jayawardena and Cates were approached for comment and asked what the values of the IOF are, as they understand them.
Jayawardena’s office replied, “Ranil was present for a short part of the conference – to set out his own views – and our records do not indicate that he shared a platform with anyone representing the International Organisation of the Family.”
Cates’ office was also keen to stress that speaking at the conference didn’t constitute sharing a platform with other speakers. “She spoke on a panel. Nobody from that organisation was on the panel. They were all MPs or MEPs.”
These Elections Will be Fought Dirty and in the Shadows. VoteWatch Will Help Shine a Light
It’s now just 12 weeks until millions of people will go to the ballot box in England. And who knows how little time we have until the General Election?
In May, those in England will be electing thousands of councillors plus mayors in London, the East Midlands, Greater Manchester, the Liverpool City Region, the North East, South Yorkshire, Tees Valley, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, and York & North Yorkshire. And across England and Wales, new Police and Crime Commissioners (remember them?) are being picked.
These mayoral and PCC elections will be happening under a new voting system - well, a Victorian one imposed on them following the Elections Act 2022.
But these aren’t the only democratic challenges this year.
Unprecedented Risks
The upcoming General Election will require mandatory Voter ID for the first time ever, sparking concerns about its impact on voter turnout and access. Recent polling by WeThink for this paper showed that up to ten million voters are unaware of the new requirements. It’s a potential disaster in the making.
Ministers have also awarded themselves a huge hike in the election spending limit, with an 80% rise in the cap for political parties. Needless to say, only Sunak’s party knows when the election will be, giving them a major advantage.
The Government has handed a new strategy to the Electoral Commission - for the first time steering what was previously an independent elections watchdog.
Meanwhile, around eight million people are completely missing from the electoral roll in Britain, with little indication that this gap is being closed. Indeed, many of those missing millions will have to both register to vote, and to order photo ID.
As usual super-safe seats will be ignored by parties and the media- while a handful of swing seats will lap up parties’ largesse and compete for votes.
"Dark money" and a lack of funding transparency in political campaigns will leave open questions about the sources of campaign cash - and the influence of opaque groups and think tanks on our elections.
Take just one example: unlike businesses and charities, political parties are not subject to anti-money laundering regulations - the rules to prevent illicit cash flowing into the system. It’s a situation that Electoral Commission chair John Pullinger has described as untenable. And yet it persists.
Nor is there any cap on the amount one person or company can donate to a political cause or party: one British citizen living in Russia for the past 50 years could, in theory, bankroll a party’s entire election campaign, with that party indebted to the tune of £5m, £15m, £30m or more.
This year, we may see the emergence of new 'astroturf' groups - PR-firm initiated campaigns that have little genuine popular support, but can shape political discourse, fueled by money from industry groups and wealthy donors.
These battles will be both on and offline. Millions will be spent on ‘microtargeting’ voters online, with the opportunity for highly personalised and potentially manipulative campaign strategies.
But at the same time, parties will use dirty tricks locally - issuing election leaflets that masquerade as local newspapers, blurring the lines between genuine news and campaign propaganda.
Misinformation and disinformation, from activists here but also potentially from hostile states, pose a significant risk to the integrity of elections by leading voters to question who they can really trust.
That problem is sent into overdrive by the advent of deepfakes and generative AI - with this year marking the first genuine 'artificial intelligence elections' in the UK.
Oh, and the expansion of the overseas franchise in 2024 has led to an addition of two million extra potential overseas voters. They’ll be able to vote wherever they last lived in the UK, sometimes many decades ago.
A Plan of Action
As a result of all this, UK elections face major challenges to their integrity this year.
And we need hard-hitting media - fearless investigative journalism - to follow the cash and the ads, and to call out dodgy campaigning when it rears its head. That’s where you come in.
Alongside the local heroes at the Bylines Network, our sister organisation, we want to launch an ambitious project to track these issues and put democracy front and centre this year.
VoteWatch 2024 will have three core focuses:
We’re relying on our supporters to make the project a reality. Because we know that if we don’t make this effort, no one else will.
So this is an ask: please help us cover the staff, infrastructure and investigative resources we need to make it possible. We need to raise £20,000 to get this off the ground - and when we raise it, the work starts with gusto. We’ve got exciting plans but it will take all our efforts to get it off the ground.
DONATE / HELP US MONITOR 2024 ELECTIONS
VoteWatch Volunteers
There’s more to do - and this one doesn’t cost a penny. We want to work with readers across the country to get a continuous stream of perspectives, insights and news of what’s happening on the ground.
What does the election campaign look like where you are? Why have candidates and parties been saying? What leaflets are you getting - and who’s targeting you on social media?
We’re looking for as many volunteers as possible - citizen sentinels - to watch the ground campaign and feed into our national reporting. We’ll put the spotlight on dirty tricks, wherever it's happening, while building a picture of emerging campaign trends.
It’s a biggy, but we think if anyone can do it, it’s us and the hundreds of citizen journalists at the Bylines Network and its 10 regional sites.
So, can you sign up to be a VoteWatch Volunteer?
Thanks for your support. It’s going to be a dirty year in politics, but we can help clean it up.
Fill in our short form to become a VoteWatch Volunteer here and we'll be in touch soon.
Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com
Dark Money Lobby Group Denies Sponsoring Liz Truss ‘PopCon’ Platform Set Up by Former Director
The new “Popular Conservativism” (“PopCon”) initiative launched in recent weeks abruptly deleted Conservative MPs Liz Truss, Simon Clarke, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ranil Jayawardena from its website in response to an investigation by Byline Times exposing its ties to a dark money lobby group linked to climate denialism, scientific racism, and free market extremism.
The initiative has been attributed to the emergence of a splinter faction of Conservative Party members led by Liz Truss, the shortest-serving prime minister in British history. A member of the faction, Simon Clarke MP, published a controversial column in the Telegraph on Wednesday demanding that the party replace Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Byline Times can confirm that the Popular Conservativism website, www.popularconservatism.com, was registered on 14 November last year by a private limited company, Popular Development Partners Limited, whose director is Mark Littlewood. Just months earlier Littlewood had stepped down as Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). However, Littlewood remains affiliated with the IEA as Senior Economics Fellow.
The IEA is a dark money lobby group which refuses to fully disclose its sources of funding, but which regularly campaigns for a form of free market extremism that culminated in the failed ‘Trussonomics’ agenda in 2022.
A previous investigation by Byline Times revealed that the IEA played a key role in mainstreaming the figure of Charles Murray, a notorious scientific racist who claims that black people have lower IQs than white people due to genetic inferiority. The IEA also has an alarming track record of climate science denialism, and is part of a network of opaque hard right think tanks in the UK which have received millions in ‘dark money’ donations from American donors. Other confirmed funders include BP and gambling interests.
The group also has close ties with climate-denying alt-right libertarian groups which are supportive of former US President Donald Trump.
A spokesperson for the IEA said: “Popular Conservatism is not sponsored, funded or controlled by the IEA. To suggest otherwise is entirely false.”
Minutes after sending this statement, the Popular Conservativism website was temporarily deleted. When it was republished, the names and images of Truss, Rees-Mogg, Clarke and Jayawardena - identifies as speakers for a forthcoming launch event on 6 February - had been deleted.
Neither Mark Littlewood nor any of the Conservative MPs linked to the ‘PopCon’ faction and slated to speak at a forthcoming launch event – including Liz Truss and her former ministers Simon Clarke, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Ranil Jayawardena – responded to requests for comment.
This article was updated on 25 January 2024 to clarify that www.popularconservatism.com had been temporarily suspended following inquiries from Byline Times, after which Truss, Clarke, Rees-Mogg and Jayawardena were deleted from the website.
Two Million More Brits Living Abroad Now Eligible to Donate to UK Parties as Ministers Scrap Time Limit
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The next Westminster election will be the first where every single British citizen living abroad will be entitled to vote - and donate to sway the election debate - no matter how long they have lived outside the country.
The abolition of the ‘15 year rule’ capping how long Brits retained the vote while living abroad means that an estimated extra two million people will be able to pick an MP, representing a constituency they may not have lived in for 50 years or more.
The Government estimates that the number of potential overseas voters following the introduction of the Overseas Electors measures will be between 3.2 and 3.3 million British citizens. The current electorate is around one million potential overseas voters.
Just over 230,000 people were registered as overseas voters at the 2019 general election, but that number is likely to triple. The Government’s Impact Assessment estimates that the proportion who will register to vote will be similar to those who could already vote abroad, which in 2017 and 2019 was 19%.
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The latest figures - which appear to be from 2017 - showed that 33% of all British-born emigrants living outside the UK in 2017 lived in Australia or New Zealand, 28% lived in the US or Canada and 26% in the EU – of which 6% lived in Ireland.
The Government estimates that the changes will cost £40m over the next 10 years.
How it Will Work
Overseas electors will be entitled to register in respect of the last place they were registered or, if they were never registered, the last place they were resident. This could be in any constituency in the UK. They must (attempt) to prove to a council Electoral Registration Officer that they used to live there to be added to the register.
However, if overseas electors lack documentary evidence of where they used to live in the UK, a UK resident voter can “attest” that they are telling the truth. The Government rejected a similar “attestation” mechanism for those who lack photo ID when voting in person in UK elections.
A recent Government paper revealed a “high degree of uncertainty” about the numbers who might register - and therefore the potential burden on local council electoral offices.
The Impact Assessment noted: “There is no official data on the number of British citizens living abroad. United Nations migration data and Office for National Statistics International Passenger Survey data have been used to estimate this…
"There is a high degree of uncertainty regarding the additional volumes of registration applications as a result of extending the overseas franchise to all British citizens who have been previously registered or resident in the UK.”
EXCLUSIVE
The Government is now able to steer the strategy and focus of the UK’s elections body.
Josiah Mortimer
Offshore Cash Bonanza?
Fears have previously been raised about the lack of checks or restrictions on donations from abroad when this change came into force. British citizens who’ve lived outside of the UK - for example tax havens - for decades can now donate unlimited sums of money to UK parties and campaigns, as Byline Times has reported.
A Cabinet Office source claimed there are strict rules which explicitly prohibit foreign money being funnelled through permissible donors on behalf of impermissible donors, adding that political parties and campaigners must take “all reasonable steps” to verify the permissibility of a donation within 30 days. It is a criminal offence to purposefully evade these rules.
However, the chances of a successful criminal prosecution for an overseas voter breaking UK election rules seem very slim. Almost no one is likely to be extradited from their foreign residence to the UK amid an electoral law breach.
Tom Brake, director of reform group Unlock Democracy, told Byline Times: 'With the potential for hundreds of thousands of UK citizens living abroad going onto the register for the first time, the government must do two things.
“Firstly, keep a watchful eye on marginal seats to ensure a disproportionate number of electors aren't registering in seats that could be swung by a handful of votes. Secondly, act to block any possibility of illegal foreign or criminal donations leaching into party funds.
“That means requiring political parties to conduct money laundering checks on big donations and to ban unincorporated associations from donating to political campaigns.”
BREAKING
Swing seats could be decided by Brits living in Moscow or Iran following changes to election rules
Josiah Mortimer
Significant Claims
Unlock Democracy estimates that around 300,000 extra people may now vote in UK parliamentary elections, amounting to around 450 extra voters per seat. Twelve seats had majorities smaller than that in 2019.
However, the distribution of the overseas voters in terms of where they register is likely to be very uneven, and potentially skewed towards wealthier seats.
UK Parliament elections covers UK parliamentary general elections, UK parliamentary by-elections and recall petitions. Eligibility for other types of election has not changed.
On Tuesday, Cabinet Office minister Simon Hoare said the Conservative pledge to deliver “Votes for Life” had been delivered. “I am pleased to be able to inform the House that, as of today, the 15-year limit on overseas electors’ voting rights is abolished…British expatriates continue to have strong links with the United Kingdom. Decisions on foreign policy, Brexit and trade will directly affect their lives.
“Now that we have left the EU, it is more important than ever to strengthen our ties with the British expatriate community. We want all British citizens abroad to remain part of our democracy, and they should continue to have their say in UK Parliamentary elections.”
Some countries including France and Italy have international constituency seats in their parliaments to ensure they have dedicated representation - for example, expat seats in Parliament for those in the Americas, Asia, Africa and so on. Ministers have rejected a similar proposal for Westminster.
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Nikki Haley Helped Boeing Kill Dark Money Disclosure Initiative
While serving on the board of Boeing in 2020, GOP presidential candidate and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley helped kill an initiative designed to force the company to more comprehensively disclose its spending to influence politicians and safety regulators, government filings show.
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The Mone Scandal Shows New Laws Around Offshore Ownership Aren’t Working
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The furore around the Conservative Peer Michelle Mone and her concealment of involvement in a £203 million Covid contract shows that laws requiring offshore companies to list their beneficial owners are being ignored.
In 2022, the Register of Overseas Entities (ROE) came into force in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with the Government pledging to “require anonymous foreign owners of UK property to reveal their real identities to ensure criminals cannot hide behind secretive chains of shell companies”. However, research by Byline Times shows that many companies that own property in the UK continue to obscure their real owners.
Held by Companies House, the ROE “requires overseas entities that own land or property in the UK to declare their beneficial owners and/or managing officers”, and promises “severe sanctions for those who do not comply”.
A beneficial owner is “any individual or entity that has significant influence or control over the overseas entity”. However, many businesses seem to be avoiding the new rules, with only 40% of offshore companies having registered by March 2023. LSE researchers revealed in September that “70 per cent of properties held via overseas shell companies (109,000 out of 152,000) still do not publish information about who really owns them”.
The new legislation is useful from a journalistic perspective because it allows us to check company records with publicly available information about who benefits from particular companies. Tory peer Michelle Mone and her husband Doug Barrowman are connected to a number of companies that don’t appear to list them as their ultimate owner.
COVID Cronyism and Mone – The Tip of the Iceberg: Byline Times’ Full Story of the PPE Cash Carousel
Byline Times has been unravelling the dealings behind the procurement of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the UK since the very early days of the pandemic. Here’s what we learnt – and what we still need answers to…
Josiah Mortimer
While PPE Medpro doesn’t seem to own property in the UK, it currently lists Arthur John Lancaster as its beneficial owner, who the website Tax Policy Associates says is “an accountant who is closely connected to Douglas Barrowman and the Knox Group. Lancaster was recently described by a tax tribunal as “seriously misleading”, “evasive” and “lacking in candor”.” Tax Policy states that if Barrowman intentionally hid his ownership of PPE Medpro, “then criminal offences were committed.”
Tax Policy Associates also reported this week that Barrowman and Mone hid their ownership of a house in Belgravia through two British Virgin Islands companies and a trust, none of which name them as the beneficial owners on Companies House.
Following their interview with the BBC, the broadcaster reported that “Mr Barrowman said that he had led the PPE Medpro consortium, even though he is not listed at Companies House as having any connection to the company. He told the BBC that he was, in effect, the ultimate beneficial owner of the firm”.
What about the Russian oligarchs whose activities in the UK were the reason for the introduction of the ROE legislation? The Cypriot website Philenews stated in February that “Only four Russian nationals under British Government sanctions appeared on the [ROE] register as of Thursday morning. They were: Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s wealthiest businessmen; Russia’s former first deputy prime minister Igor Shuvalov and his wife; and Alexander Frolov, the former chief executive officer of Evraz, a Russian steel and mining company.”
Bloomberg reported in February that the register revealed Frolov’s property in Knightsbridge and St George’s Hill in London
Oliver Bullough, author of the book Butler to the World, told Byline Times that wealthy oligarchs would generally not bother using shell companies in offshore jurisdictions like the Isle of Man, which is known as a location for registering private jets. Instead, they are more likely to use trusts to hide their ownership of UK property. While HMRC holds information on who the beneficiaries of trusts are, this information is not public.
However, it doesn’t seem that some Russian oligarchs with known property in the UK are abiding by the legislation either. Oleg Deripaska, for example, is known to own a property in Belgrave Square, whose registered owner according to the Land Registry is a company based in the British Virgin Islands, and not registered on Companies House.
Beechwood House in Hampstead, previously owned by sanctioned Uzbek-Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov, was reported to have been transferred to a trust in 2022 before he was hit with sanctions. The Land Registry title deed gives its owner as Hanley Ltd, a company that lists its beneficial owner as the Swiss based Pomerol Capital Sa, and its correspondence address as another Geneva company which is part of the Summit Group, “a leading independent provider of personalised fiduciary and administrative services”.
Usmanov's lawyers told Byline Times that he does not own Beechwood House, and that it was transferred to a trust in 2008, long before sanctions were imposed. He claims to no longer be a beneficiary of the trust as of 2022, and that the transfer of assets to the trust was done to benefit his relatives.
One offshore property owner who does seem to have complied with the legislation is Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates. The Guardian revealed in 2020 that he had a £5 billion London property empire, and judging by the title deed to his Berkeley Square properties, the company which owns them, Berkeley Square Holdings Limited, does in fact register that its owner is the ‘Private Department Of The President Of Uae’.
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Besides oligarchs and oil sheikhs, property developers who own UK property through offshore companies also need to comply with the ROE legislation.
Byline Times has looked at dozens of companies based at the same address in the Isle of Man, many of which are linked to the property tycoon Asif Aziz and managed by the company Golfrate, which Aziz founded in 1991. The Times reported in 2020 that “Golfrate is run by Aziz's family and controls 900 properties”.
A number of companies registered here were reported by Private Eye in 2015 to be involved in buying up pubs in London and turning them into luxury apartments. Planning documents from 2023 show that Golfrate is still acting for companies registered in the Isle of Man, such as Hamna Wakaf Ltd. Many of the companies registered at the address list another offshore company, Circumference Fs (Cayman) Ltd as their owner.
In a recent House of Commons debate on the Register of Overseas Entities, Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, said, “Journalists have revealed that the family of Asif Aziz, a landlord to my constituents in Britannia Point, Colliers Wood, manages a large property portfolio registered under dozens of companies on the Isle of Man.” Britannia Point is owned by another company registered at the same Isle of Man address which also lists Circumference Fs (Cayman) Ltd as its ultimate beneficial owner.
Asif Aziz’s lawyers insist he has “never closed down a pub” and “is not the beneficial owner” of companies managed by Golfrate. Listing a Cayman Islands financial services company as the beneficial owner of another offshore company may not be against the Register of Overseas Entities rules, but raises the question about whether those rules themselves are effective.
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Analysis by BBC News and Transparency International in February suggested that “almost half of firms required to declare who is behind them failed to do so.” At that time, Transparency International said around 52,000 UK properties were still owned anonymously.
The Department for Business, responding to a Freedom of Information request sent by Byline Times, said “Companies House has begun enforcement against overseas entities that have either failed to register or have failed to provide their annual update on time. For the offence of failing to register, 3190 warning notices have been sent, which has brought a number of overseas entities into compliance, and 45 penalties to a total value of £2,100,000 have been issued so far (data as of 17 October 2023).” How much money has actually been collected in fines is unclear.
Although new reporting requirements have been introduced for companies where the Beneficial Owner is a trustee of a trust, LSE reported that “In an overwhelming 87 per cent of cases, where the researchers found that beneficial ownership information was missing or inaccessible to the public, it was due to deliberate choices by Government to keep the information out of scope of the legislation, rather than rule-breaking by overseas companies.”
A spokesperson from the Department for Business and Trade said, “The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill will bear down on kleptocrats, criminals and terrorists who abuse our open economy, strengthening the UK's reputation as a place where legitimate business can thrive. We are committed to publishing a consultation before the end of the year on how to make trust information more transparent”.
Labour peer Lord Coaker, responding to the passage of the Economic Crime and Transparency Act, which tightens up reporting requirements for the ROE, said “The Bill is an important step forward, but the enforcement of it is everything. If laws that have been improved are not enforced, much of the debate and discussion we have had will not be as valuable as it should be.”
This article was updated on 25/12/23 with more information on Alisher Usmanov’s connection to Beechwood House
UK’s Politics Now Wide Open to Foreign Donations, Peers Warn, as Government Scraps Time Limit on Brits’ Donations from Abroad
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The floodgates have been opened to foreign interference in British democracy, peers have warned, as ministers pushed through the extension of votes - and donations - for life for Brits who live abroad.
The Government has just extended voting and political donation rights to British citizens living abroad, irrespective of how long they have been away from the UK. It was a manifesto pledge from the Conservatives in 2019, but critics have noted there are few checks to ensure that the sources of donations from abroad can be vetted.
This move has sparked a heated debate about the integrity of the UK's democratic process, particularly in light of the lack of checks on political donations from abroad.
On Tuesday, Byline Times covered a damning new report finding that the UK Government is “almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 general election”.
The Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, comprising MPs and peers from both Houses of Parliament, said it was alarmed that attempts to interfere may be made in the next general election – with no proper protection for politicians and political parties – and have sought an urgent meeting with the National Cyber Security Centre to discuss the matter.
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In the debate on changes to the Representation of the People (Overseas Electors Amendment) Regulations on Tuesday night (12 December), Minister Baroness Penn, representing the Government, argued that overseas electors should be considered an integral part of the democracy and have the same rights as other citizens, including making political donations.
But Labour’s Lord Khan, supported by a majority in the House, warned the changes could "dangerously weaken" restrictions on overseas political donations and allow more foreign money to influence British politics.
With some 30 seats in the last general election decided by fewer than 1,000 votes, even a small number of overseas votes could swing results. And the new registration rules, which allow any UK voter to attest to the identity and past location of an overseas voter, were seen as potentially vulnerable to manipulation. This loophole, critics argue, could be exploited by those wishing to influence elections in specific seats by claiming they lived in swing seats some decades ago.
Bungs from Moscow
Under current rules, political donors who contribute more than £500 must be on the electoral register. The removal of the 15-year limit, however, might allow individuals with minimal connections to the UK, possibly from states hostile to Britain, to exert significant influence through financial contributions, opposition peers warned.
And Lord Khan noted that Brits who live in Russia and haven’t returned to the UK for decades could now donate vast sums from Moscow to political parties here.
“It is beyond belief that the Government [is] seeking to risk opening our system at such a critical time for our world. What would a political party do if, for instance, it were offered a donation of £50,000 by somebody who lives and works in Moscow today?” Lord Khan said.
The Labour front bench, represented by Lord Khan, as well as Liberal Democrats stressed that this could open the door to manipulation by hostile foreign actors.
There is no single body responsible for investigating the sources of donations, and donations made by Brits living abroad for decades will likely be treated the same as any other - rather than as ‘foreign’ donations which are theoretically illegal in the UK.
Lib Dem peer Lord Rennard was particularly concerned about the changes, arguing: “The absence of any cap on the size of donations will no doubt encourage more donations of, say, £5 million-plus to come from people whose real interests are not in this country.
“Why should a billionaire tax exile be able to fund a political party in the UK, and who knows where their money really comes from?”
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No Scrutiny
He added that the Government has “clipped the wings” of the previously independent Electoral Commission through the Elections Act 2022, and stripped it of the ability to launch criminal investigations into election finance laws.
There is also doubt over how fines can be levied to Brits abroad who are abusing the new rules.
“Political parties themselves have very little capacity to scrutinise overseas bank accounts, or to inspect the accounts of companies operating overseas, even if they want to. Earlier this year, the Government rejected an amendment to the then National Security Bill which would have insisted on greater scrutiny of the original sources of donations to parties. I wonder why?” Lord Rennard asked.
The chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Julian Lewis, earlier this year backed tougher checks, noting that “the UK has clearly welcomed Russian money, including in the political sphere … We must protect against covert, foreign state-backed financial donations if we are to defend our democratic institutions from harmful interference and influence”
However, the Government voted against tougher checks by parties on sources of donations. “I think perhaps we should be told [why]” Lord Rennard said.
Lord Rennard suggested alternative models, such as overseas constituencies similar to those in France and Italy, to better represent citizens living abroad and avoid swing seat results being changed by those with little connection to the UK, as well as beefed up investigatory powers for the Electoral Commission and National Crime Agency.
Last month, the Government announced an increase in national party spending limits of 80%, allowing a party to spend up to £35 million in a general election year. The Conservatives are currently out-fundraising Labour by millions of pounds per quarter.
But Boris Johnson’s party spent just £16 million on his successful election campaign in 2019. “The reason for the new limits must in part be to allow for major new donations from abroad,” Lord Rennard said.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab) also pointed out that the slogan of the Boston Tea Party which triggered the American war of independence was: “No taxation without representation”.
“What we have in this case is clearly representation without taxation, as people can have very vestigial links,” the Welsh peer said.
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Fraud Risk
Lord Anderson added that the idea of fining Brits abroad who breach election law - for example, by falsely claiming to have lived in a certain seat when in the UK - is “absurd”.
“How can any fines be enforced on someone who lives a good distance abroad? This is just window dressing; it is a spurious suggestion. What is the real motive of the Government in pressing this?..It is not the advance of democracy; instead, it gives the opportunity for many people to interfere in our elections.”
And he questioned whether the Government expects wealthy donors abroad to “suddenly surface” as a result of the proposals. “In their dying days, this Government have brought forward these proposals. My hope is that an incoming Labour Government will speedily reverse them,” the Labour peer said.
In theory, someone could have lived abroad for 50 years, with little evidence of where they used to vote, and a friend could vouch that they were telling the truth about their eligibility to cast their vote in a marginal seat and to make unlimited donations to a political party. The same “vouching” rules do not apply to voter identification, where the Government rejected people being able to “attest” for someone’s identity if they lack ID at the polling station.
There are an estimated 3.5 million British overseas citizens, amounting to roughly 5,500 per constituency, if they all registered. “If we assume that no more than 50% register, that is still well over 2,000 per constituency,” Lib Dem Lord Wallace said. Currently, around one million Brits abroad are eligible to vote (having lived abroad for up to 15 years), though that is now expected to grow to encompass nearly all the 3.5 million.
Lord Khan noted in the debate there were “already clear evidence of attempts by [foreign state] actors to influence UK democracy.”
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One of the largest donations to the Conservative Party this year, of £5 million, came from someone whose financial interests are centred in Dubai, one of the main offshore centres for Russian and Chinese money, Lord Wallace noted. Another of the largest such donations, of £2 million, came from a Tory-backer whose financial and commercial interests are in Indonesia and Thailand.
The Government appears to have noted the threat of foreign interference, with Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the House of Commons, writing to Tom Tugendhat, Security Minister, in September to call “for a new intelligence-sharing framework between the security services and the UK’s main parties”.
He added: “Some government insiders fear parties have too little access to sensitive information about potential donors.” Mordaunt was reportedly working with officials to identify new mechanisms for data sharing between intelligence officials and political parties. There is no allegation the rules were broken.
The Electoral Commission does not have powers to investigate either registration or the source of donations in other countries, Lords heard.
Lord Khan’s amendment to the Government motion, expressing “regret” over the heightened risk of foreign interference, passed after crossbenchers, Lib Dems and Labour peers got behind it. However, the changes as a whole are now law.
Baroness Penn, representing the Government, defended the move, saying, "Overseas electors are important participants in our democracy, and it is only right that they should be able to make donations to political parties in Great Britain in the same way as other citizens registered on the electoral roll in Great Britain…
“UK electoral law sets out a stringent regime of donations controls to ensure that only those with a legitimate interest in UK elections can make political donations, and that political donations are transparent. The same transparency measures will apply to those who are empowered to vote and donate through this expansion of the franchise, as applies to existing voters. Money from a foreign or unknown source is illegal.”
During the passage of the then National Security Bill, the Government committed to undertake a consultation on enhanced information sharing between parties, regulators and police to help “identify and mitigate” foreign interference in political donations. The Government will lay a report on that before Parliament by the end of next year, Baroness Penn said.
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Revealed: Britain’s Broken Election Laws Just Got Even Worse
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There has never been more money in British politics. Since the start of last year, Labour has raised more than £25 million. The Conservatives have taken in almost £40 million. Now, the parties can spend more than ever before.
On Monday, the Government rushed through massive increases in spending and donations thresholds – without holding a single parliamentary vote and with, seemingly, no media coverage (the eagle-eyed Seth Thevoz excepted).
But these new rules matter.
They mean that parties can spend more during election campaigns. They also mean more donors will be hidden from the public.
From now on, parties can accept donations of £11,180 – up from £7,500 – without publishing the donor’s name. That may not sound like a dramatic difference, but it’s actually a lot of money for British politics.
Just £12,000 bought Richard Desmond a seat next to then Housing Minister Robert Jenrick at a Conservative fundraising dinner in 2020, where the property developer was able to successfully lobby for a planning decision to be overturned, saving himself an estimated £50 million.
The new rules mean a family with two kids could donate almost £50,000 anonymously.
The Government’s own legislation admits that “a full impact assessment has not been produced for this instrument as no, or no significant, impact on the private, voluntary or public sector is foreseen”.
This is a truly extraordinary statement: legislation that will significantly increase the amount of 'dark money' in British politics is not judged to have any impact on, well, anything.
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In the House of Commons, Conservative MP Jacob Young, a junior minister at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities – which is now in charge of British election laws – explained the changes as merely a reflection of “historic inflation” in the 20 years since the limits were initially set.
This is both true and deeply disingenuous. Why? Because, while inflation has risen sharply over two decades, the Committee on Standards in Public Life had previously called for the limits to be lowered.
And, even more importantly, political spending and donations thresholds have been increased by the very same Government that is completely failing to enforce British political finance laws and which has refused to close the many loopholes that allow dark money to pollute the political system.
Last year, it introduced the Elections Act, of which probably the most eye-catching measure was the introduction of mandatory voter ID.
More than £4.5 million was spent advertising voter ID online and off, according to a Freedom of Information request I submitted this summer. Nevertheless, an Electoral Commission study found that hundreds of thousands of voters could be excluded at the next general election – with the voter ID law disproportionately affecting poorer people, minorities, and those with disabilities.
How did the Department for Levelling Up respond? It said the roll-out of voter ID was “very encouraging”.
Voter ID is the start, but not the end, of the Elections Act’s calumnies. The legislation also gave ministers powers to set the strategy for, and guide the work of, the elections watchdog, the Electoral Commission. Forget the ‘cradle of parliamentary democracy’ talk – Britain, in effect, no longer has an independent elections regulator.
It is hard not to see the move as a victor’s punishment for the Commission’s decision to investigate the Vote Leave campaign’s breaches of electoral law during the 2016 EU Referendum. It is equally hard to conceive of a similar investigation happening again.
The Elections Act also removed the Commission’s power to initiate criminal proceedings. The watchdog had not used this power but – as Spotlight on Corruption has pointed out – its removal is likely to weaken its investigative and compliance activities.
The UK is heading into the next general election with no law enforcement body at a national level overseeing the political system. The National Crime Agency has no election finance expertise and has made it clear it is not interested in developing any. (Perhaps burned by its failed investigation into Brexit donor Arron Banks).
As the Electoral Commission has noted, UK elections law “is silent on whether or not money obtained from crime would make a political contribution unlawful”.
It's a good job there is no evidence of political donations being linked to the proceeds of criminal acts then.
But there’s more. The Elections Act introduced measures that will allow up to 3.5 million British nationals living overseas to be added to the electoral register. This is not a bad thing in itself, but the effect is added burdens on the electoral system at the same time as a weakening of its checks and balances.
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Foreign donors can still give money through UK-registered companies – even if the firm hasn’t made any profits.
The Government has also refused to do anything about shadowy unincorporated associations giving anonymous money to politics – despite repeated warnings, including from figures such as the former MI5 director Lord Evans.
Indeed, while most of the new donations and spending limits passed this week come into force in the new year, for unincorporated associations the legislation is explicitly backdated to October 1 2023. A cynic might wonder if there is any connection between this and the huge sums that the Conservatives receive in donations through these secrecy vehicles.
Would Labour reverse this if in power? There is little sign that this could be the case. Warm words about trust seem unlikely to be met with action.
Last month, I attended a fringe event about ethics and integrity at the Labour Conference – Neither of the two Labour representatives on the panel would commit to any substantive changes to tighten electoral laws or take dark money out of politics.
It is already clear that the next election is going to be the most expensive in British history. Labour’s private funding operation has massively ramped up. The Conservatives are taking in record sums, despite double-digit polling deficits. The legislation introduced this week means that parties can spend approximately a third more money during the next general election.
“We probably shouldn’t be surprised that this Government is increasing the amount of money they can bring in anonymously,” Labour MP Clive Lewis said. “This is a Government that has been far too cosy with, and facilitated a lot of the issues we have, with dark money in politics. Why? Because it’s benefited them.”
All this additional money will be spent in a political system with no checks and balances. This should worry everyone who cares about democracy.
Peter Geoghegan is the author of the bestselling 'Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics’