The Labour-linked lobbying firm boasting invite-only access to the UK Treasury

LONDON — A former Labour Cabinet minister-turned-lobbyist offered private access for his clients and other business executives to an event at the U.K. Treasury in London.

According to an email seen by POLITICO, Jim Murphy of lobbying firm Arden Strategies — which is fast gaining a reputation as a highly connected public affairs agency under Keir Starmer’s administration — invited business chiefs to a “private roundtable meeting” inside the Treasury’s Whitehall headquarters on Sept. 17.

The meeting was with Ian Corfield, a Labour donor who sparked controversy when he was handed a top Treasury advisory job after giving money to key Labour figures. It comes ahead of the government’s much-hyped investment summit next month.

“Ahead of the International Investment Summit on 14 October, this meeting will provide an opportunity for you, alongside other U.K. business leaders, to hear from Ian about the government’s investment priorities, and for you to share your thoughts and ideas,” the invite read.

Murphy and his lobbying firm Arden Strategies are seen as leading power players in the new administration.

The former Scottish Labour leader, who served in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet, built up goodwill with party figures in the run-up to Labour’s landslide win, helping the party to run business events and put on fundraisers for candidates.

Several MPs benefited from a joint Arden/Budweiser fundraiser during the campaign, according to the British parliament’s official register of interests.

The firm has sponsored two successive Labour Business Conferences.

Its logo was plastered across Labour’s wider party conference in Liverpool last week, and its panels bagged appearances from heavy hitters in the Cabinet including Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds and leader of the House of Commons Lucy Powell. One rival public affairs professional joked that the Liverpool gathering should be dubbed “Arden conference.”

There is no suggestion Arden has broken any rules with the Treasury event.

While it is not unusual for lobbying firms to arrange meet-ups involving government officials and clients, it is less orthodox for firms to pick attendees for events on government premises.

Arden Strategies confirmed the Sept. 17 event in a statement, saying it “was a Treasury roundtable.” It did not directly answer a question about whether it had organized the event on behalf of the government. The Treasury declined to comment on the record.

Arden stressed that it is not playing any role in organizing the wider October investment summit, which is being billed as “advancing opportunities for investment and growth across the country.”

“We were happy to join a group of business leaders who want to invest in the U.K. at a meeting in the Treasury. Some of the attendees were clients of Arden, and many were not, all of whom want to bring investment and jobs here,” a spokesperson for the firm said of the September roundtable.

‘Grave risks’

The move has raised eyebrows among ethics campaigners, however, amid wider frustration with what they see as a lack of progress on Labour’s plans for a government transparency overhaul.

The fledgling administration is currently under fire on a number of fronts, including gifts to top ministers from wealthy donors and the appointment of key allies to top civil service jobs.

“Outsourcing ‘drumming up business’ to friendly lobby groups risks giving their clients privileged access to ministers, potentially squeezing out other legitimate business interests and public interest concerns,” warned Susan Hawley, executive director of anti-graft group Spotlight on Corruption.

“This suggests that the new government may not yet have fully taken into account the grave risks of pervasive conflicts of interest and policy capture that its new ‘co-governing with business’ strategy could potentially bring.”

“If we had a government meeting we would always choose the cast list ourselves. We wouldn’t ask a lobbying firm to curate it,” said Henry Newman, a former political adviser to Tory ministers including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove.

‘Triage’

The invite is just the latest sign of Arden’s growing influence in Westminster.

The outfit started out as a small election strategy shop in 2017. It grew with a series of high-profile hires from Labour land ahead of the election. Arden has pitched itself as trying to bridge the gap between Labour and business — with Murphy vowing his firm would “sponsor one constituency dinner a week until the election.”

“I think Labour is better at engaging with business than business is at engaging with Labour,” the ex-Cabinet minister told POLITICO last year as the party readied for power.

“That’s because most business leaders have never had to engage with Labour in a strategic sense. In a tactical, superficial sense they have, but when I looked last year, only three FTSE companies had the same chief exec as when Labour was last in power.”

Amid some disquiet on the left — and grumbling from rival firms — Murphy dismissed suggestions there was a conflict of interest in linking up Labour with business, describing his role as to “triage that partnership.”

He added: “There’s no more important partnership than the partnership with the private sector. I think that openness with private sector will mean we will regard a Keir Starmer government after five years as the first private sector government in Labour’s history.”