Last night, openDemocracy published a story about a £4 million donation to the Labour Party from Quadrature. The donation in question is the largest made in the history of the Labour Party and raises some very serious questions about the ethics and intentions of both those giving and receiving the money.
The story comes just days after it was revealed the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, failed to appropriately declared tens of thousands of pounds in donations from party donor Lord Waheed Alli for clothes and fashion accessories for him and his wife. This led to further revelations concerning donations for lavish hospitality suites at football matches, concert tickets and a private box with catering at the Epsom Downs Racecourse.
The Labour government must address the source of their record donation from Quadrature, a hedge fund registered in the Cayman Islands with shares worth hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuel giants, private healthcare companies and arms manufacturers. Elected on a huge swing after 14 years of Conservative rule and the punitive austerity inflicted on our communities with a simple message of "change", the Starmer's government appears to be committed to preserving the destructive status quo that has brought our NHS to its knees, profiteered from the genocide in Gaza and put the long-term future of our planet at risk.
Starmer's Labour leadership has seen a total shift in the attitudes of the party towards tax havens and evasion. It is worth noting that under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell's economic policies, Labour would have secured many billions of pounds to invest into the British public services and workforce.
With a deeply concerning relationship between successive governments and vulturistic private healthcare firms, as well as Starmer's commitment to "reform" the NHS without further investment, how can we trust the government to protect our hospitals, frontline care and exhausted workforce? The answer is that we simply cannot.
Likewise, we cannot trust Starmer or the ministers in his government to be honest brokers in the critical diplomacy that will bring about lasting peace in Europe, Africa or the Middle East, including an end Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza or its barbaric and illegal occupation of the West Bank. It is a matter of fact that over half of Starmer's cabinet have received donations from pro-Israel lobbyists and all have equivocated on the issue of Israel's repeated breaches of international law and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian land. By accepting this donation from Quadrature, despite its links to the war machine, Starmer has signalled a continuation of his passive attitude to the indiscriminate killing of over 40,000 civilians in Gaza.
Regarding Quadrature and its ties to fossil fuel giants, we must not forget the Labour's disgraceful U-turn on its green investment pledges and commitment to building a sustainable economy to overcome the climate crisis. Whilst the Earth burns, Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves refuse to adequately tax the wealthiest in our society, instead pushing the burden of austerity on to working class communities and the vulnerable. With the continuation of the two-child benefit cap and the scrapping of vital winter fuel allowance for millions of pensioners, it should be absolutely unconscionable for the Prime Minister to accept money or expensive gifts from wealthy elites.
Whether these donations are above board or appropriately declared is, at this point, an irrelevance. The political system is fundamentally broken and influence can too easily be purchased. It is also a total fallacy that one day the government can cut vital welfare for millions of people on the notion that there is not enough money in our economy to fund it, whilst staunchly defending the legitimacy of those with significant funds to shower ministers with gifts and millions of pounds. Why is it that children, families and the elderly are being asked to carry the weight of so-called fiscal responsibility whilst wealthy tax dodgers have the power to set the British political agenda?