Labour’s cronyism row rears its head again

Parliament may be in recess, but Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour government still can’t catch a break. The Prime Minister is facing further allegations of cronyism after a pro-Labour lobbyist was appointed to a top government advisory job. Dear, oh dear…

Iain Anderson, a prominent businessman who defected to Labour from the Tories in 2023, has now been hired to the Department for Business and Trade as a non-executive director. Yet Anderson will not be stepping down from his executive chairman role at Cicero, a lobbying firm whose roster includes Royal Mail, Barclays and Accenture – the latter being a management consultancy firm which holds multiple government contracts. How curious.

Anderson was the previous Tory government’s LGBT+ business champion under Boris Johnson but defected to Labour in 2023 over the Conservative party’s ‘relationship with business’. In the lead-up to the election, the businessman conducted a review for Starmer’s army that called for the party to focus on engaging with business and even donated £2,500 to help the lefty lot fight a by-election against the Tories.