middle east
COP28: Meet the Top UK Politicians Paid Big Money to ‘Advise’ Oil-Rich Gulf States
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COP28 wraps up in Dubai this week. Reports suggest the draft agreement has dropped references to a phase out of fossil fuels after opposition from oil and gas-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia.
That this COP has been marked by an unprecedented lobbying blitz has been much commented on in the British press. But I was surprised to see little mention of an inconvenient truth for British politics: that former cabinet ministers - and even prime ministers - have been paid millions for ‘advice’’ by many of the oil-rich Gulf governments that stridently oppose phasing out fossil fuels.
Let’s start with Lord Philip Hammond. Theresa May’s chancellor formed his own consultancy firm, Matrix Partners, two months after stepping down from government in 2019.
Matrix Partners recorded profits of at least £990,000 in the two years to March 2022. Hammond has been paid at least £275,000 by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and £68,000 by Bahrain - although the real sums will likely be much higher as these figures are for 2021/22 only.
A spokeswoman for Hammond pointed out to me, correctly, that he has been advising the Saudi Ministry of Finance - but the Saudi economy is driven by oil revenues.
Hammond has emerged as a vocal critical of the UK’s net zero commitments, which would see a drastic reduction in fossil fuel consumption. In August, he told The Sun that ministers had been dishonest about the cost of the energy transition, writing that “a pound spent on decarbonisation cannot be spent on something else.” (Evidently The Sun’s fact-checkers missed the Oxford University study last year that found transitioning to a decarbonised energy system would save the world $12trillion by 2050.)
Hammond said to be one of the wealthiest parliamentarians, has rejected criticism of his work for autocratic regimes. “If change is heading in the right direction, which I’m absolutely clear it is in Saudi Arabia, then I think we should encourage that change,” he told The Times at the weekend.
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It is incredibly easy for senior British politicians and civil servants to swap government offices for consultancy retainers.
In theory, ex-ministers have to register with the Office of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments if they take up any new paid or unpaid work within two years of leaving office - but even Acoba’s chief, ex-Tory MP Eric Pickles, admits the body is toothless.
When Philip Hammond told Acoba that he would be working for Mohammad Bin Salman’s regime, the Whitehall watchdog noted that the former chancellor’s inside knowledge of the UK government “could be perceived to offer an unfair advantage” - but approved it all the same.
In 2021, Acoba did find that Hammond had used his government connections to lobby for a bank he is paid to advise - but all it could do was write a strongly-worded letter. Hardly a great deterrent for rule breakers.
Hammond is not the only senior British political figure to move into consulting for unsavoury characters.
Nadhim Zahawi was a guest of the United Arab Emirates at COP28. The (briefly) former chancellor was reportedly acting as an “intermediary” between the UAE and the Barclay family as it seeks to regain control of the Telegraph Media Group - a role Zahawi failed to declare to the benighted Acoba.
BlackRock said it attended a meeting at the request of the Government to form a relationship with Nadhim Zahawi Nadhim Zahawi spent part of his last week as Chancellor seeking advice and “continued support” from the world’s largest asset manager on the Financial Services and Markets Bill and a number of other UK issues, Byline […]
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Elsewhere, former Conservative cabinet office minister Francis Maude advises the governments of oil rich Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kazakhstan through his consultancy firm.
Francis Maude Associates and Partners (FMAP) Ltd - which lists 35 employees in company accounts released last month - has a number of former Tory ministers as senior advisors including Nicholas Soames, Nick Boles and Nick Hurd as well as the former chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Robert Chote and former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Simon Collis. Maude’s former colleague Philip Hammond has also been a senior advisor at FMAP.
Although FMAP “does not undertake work for the UK government or seek to do so”, the firm has strong links to the heart of power in Britain.
Shortly after stepping down as Boris Johnson’s deputy chief of staff last year, former FMAP founder Conservative peer Simone Finn returned to the firm, which she co-owns with Maude.
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Then, of course, there’s Tony Blair. The former prime minister’s eponymous institute was reportedly paid £9m to advise the Saudi government and has also worked for the UAE.
The Tony Blair Institute remains very active in the Middle East. Its most recent company accounts talk of working “closely with the Egyptian government’s ministry” at COP28 and of “supporting governments” when “the baton passes from Egypt to the United Arab Emirates in 2023."
The Tony Blair Institute declined to say if it had been advising the UAE at COP28 - where Blair met Rishi Sunak - but said that “Mr Blair has no personal consultancy with any country, whether in the Middle East or anywhere else. Nor does he take a fee from any country with which the Institute works.”
Politicians don’t necessarily need to set up their own consultancies to work with oil rich Gulf states. The Sir Bani Yas Forum, which meets annually in the UAE to discuss issues facing the Middle East, does not release names of its agenda or its participants but Blair has attended and former foreign secretary David Milliband was paid at least £60,000 to sit on the Forum’s advisory board while he was an MP.
In 2021, then chair of the Defence Select Committee Tobias Ellwood declared more than £8,500 from the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs to pay for a trip to attend the Sir Bani Yas Forum.
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Sue Hawley, executive director of Spotlight on Corruption, said that “there are legitimate questions as to whether former Prime Ministers and Chancellors should face much longer lobbying bans and bans on lobbying for foreign governments.
“Current record levels of public distrust in politicians are being fuelled by the perception that former ministers get to line their pockets after leaving government. It is clear that the regulation of the UK's revolving door is broken.”
Just as Rishi Sunak was busy making Westminster’s most notorious prime minister-cum-lobbyist David Cameron his new foreign minister, another Conservative MP was preparing jump on the consultancy bandwagon.
Longtime chair of the 1922 committee of backbench Tory MPs, Graham Brady declared that he had set up a consulting firm in the most recent Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Graham Brady Consulting Ltd is not trading (yet) but earlier this year Brady – who is standing down at the next election – hit the headlines when he told an undercover reporter from the campaign group Led By Donkeys that he would be willing to advise a fake foreign firm. Brady said that a rate of about £6,000 a day “feels about right” – but did make clear that any payments would be on the public record.
This piece originally appeared on Peter Geoghegan’s ‘Democracy for Sale’ Substack. Sign up here for updates. (https://democracyforsale.substack.com/)
‘Populists Learn From Each Other’: Is the World Heading for a Tipping Point in 2024?
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Every year scientists warn that the planet is reaching a dangerous 'tipping point' – described by US Climate Envoy John Kerry recently as “the point at which events can simply unfold of their own momentum”. Surveying the world today, Kerry might as well have been talking about global politics.
At the start of 2023, I felt more optimistic. It was not that serious problems in the world did not exist – far from it, of course – but for the first time in years, the West appeared to have rediscovered its mojo.
Ukraine was sustaining a plucky response to Russia’s aggression, backed by a surprisingly robust US-led international support effort. This usefully served to send a warning signal to predatory regimes elsewhere not to push their territorial ambitions too far.
NATO appeared to have found renewed purpose, with Finland and Sweden both applying to join it.
EU countries were coordinating sanctions on Russia, generously hosting millions of Ukrainian refugees, and weaning themselves off dependence on Russian oil and gas.
The divisive policies of Donald Trump, and the worst of COVID, seemed to be behind us.
The UK appeared to be returning to some form of sanity, having replaced the obnoxious Boris Johnson, and the disastrous Liz Truss, with the seemingly more pragmatic Rishi Sunak. UK-EU relations looked set to improve with constructive cooperation on Ukraine, and conclusion of the Windsor Framework resolving various issues around the Northern Ireland Protocol.
There seemed to be new awareness across the transatlantic alliance of the need to stand up for democratic values, to better protect our political institutions and our economies from hostile foreign actors, and to develop a more coordinated approach on China.
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Even in the fractious Middle East, there appeared to be positive developments, with Israel improving relations with several Arab States, including Saudi Arabia.
At last, I thought, the West was emerging from its phase of uncertainty and hesitation, as reflected in its feeble response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, and invasion of Ukraine and seizure of Crimea in 2014, its failure to enforce the famous 'redline' in Syria, and the chaotic departure from Afghanistan. Ukraine seemed to suggest that there was still some 'juice' and staying power in the Western Alliance, which might usefully be applied to other global challenges.
I particularly hoped that President Joe Biden’s leadership on Ukraine would remind Americans of the value of international engagement, and the danger in allowing an authoritarian, isolationist, individual like Trump back into the Oval Office. And if that didn’t do the trick, I at least hoped that the mounting number of legal cases against Trump would scupper his second presidential campaign.
How naïve this seems now.
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The war in Ukraine has become bogged down. Russia has dug in for the long haul. Bipartisan support for Ukraine in America is fraying. The West appears set to continue giving Ukraine just enough weapons to allow it to keep fighting (and dying), but not enough to win.
There is even growing talk in some quarters of encouraging Ukrainian President Zelensky to sue for peace, even at the cost of leaving Russia in control of some parts of Ukrainian territory, and sending a message to the wider world that, after all, aggression does pay.
This seems to have been swiftly internalised by the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan, which in late September seized Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenia without suffering any serious consequences.
I don’t doubt that Hamas launched its deadly attacks on Israel on 7 October making a similar calculation, that despite, or perhaps because of Ukraine, the West would be too distracted to respond effectively. Indeed, the attack appears to have produced precisely the result that its sponsors in Iran and Russia probably wanted – a heavy-handed response by Israel which has divided international opinion and increased pressure on Western governments, especially the US, to justify its strong support for Israel.
It’s a sign of the diminishing clout of the US that its pleas for Israel to show restraint seem so far to have had only limited impact. Qatar and Egypt seem to have played the most impactful roles in hostage release negotiations so far. The savage Israeli attack on Gaza continues with no obvious end in sight.
As on Ukraine, the United Nations has been utterly unable to fulfil its mandate to uphold international peace and security, due to irreconcilable divisions between the five permanent members of the Security Council.
Meanwhile, Sweden’s NATO membership remains pending, blocked by Turkey and Hungary. Ambitious plans for further EU enlargement to take in Ukraine, Moldova and eight other applicant or aspirant countries by 2030, appear unrealistic, given concerns over whether the EU can agree on the political and economic changes required to incorporate so many new members, as well as outright opposition from some existing members, such as Hungary. The same hesitation is likely to afflict similar NATO enlargement decisions at its 75th anniversary summit in Washington next year.
Countries across the world are also struggling to manage the issue of mass migration, with incumbent governments facing a right-wing populist backlash if they fail to take strong action. The electoral success of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands is a foretaste of what might be to come in elections across the EU, including for the European Parliament. It’s no longer just Britain threatening to water-down refugee protections, and turn away migrants, even at the risk of contravening the previously sacrosanct principle of non-refoulement.
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At the time of writing, COP28 seems unlikely to produce any meaningful breakthroughs, sufficient to put the world closer on track to reach the Paris agreement goal of limiting global warming to below 2°C of pre-industrial levels.
Authoritarians everywhere seem emboldened. According to Freedom House, 80% of the world’s people live in countries or territories rated 'not free' or only 'partly free' in its annual Freedom in the World report.
There have been seven successful military coups in Africa alone since 2020. Conflicts continue to rage in other countries across the world, such as Syria, Yemen, Burma and Sudan.
It’s a very depressing global picture. But what strikes most chill into my heart is the unimaginably awful prospect that Donald Trump might actually succeed in becoming US President again, given the unpopularity of the aging Biden, and the lack of a viable alternative Republican candidate as it currently stands.
Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney recently warned Americans that Donald Trump would almost certainly refuse to leave office if he won a second term, and that a vote for him could therefore be “the last election that you ever get to vote in". The Republican added that “America would be sleepwalking into dictatorship”.
Laura Thornton, senior vice president for democracy at the US-based think tank, the German Marshall Fund, recently described to me that “democracy is part of a wider geopolitical eco-system. Populists learn from each other. Once democracy starts to erode in one country, it risks unravelling in other countries. Election denialism [claims that elections were fraudulent or stolen] is the new black”.
There’s a famous incident in the US Civil War when Abraham Lincoln is asked by a soldier if he still had faith in a Union victory. Lincoln, quoting his Secretary of State, William Seward, said that he believed “there’s always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but enough to meet the emergency”. Would he sound so confident today?
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