A former chair of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a lobby group which promotes Israeli interests and gambling lobbyist, Mendelsohn was embroiled in the 1990s ‘Lobbygate’ scandal. He and his partners at Lawson Lucas Mendelsohn, a public affairs and political communications consultancy otherwise known as LLM Communications, were recorded offering access to the Blair government for substantial sums. They claimed influence over policy, helped Rupert Murdoch shape law and offered suggestions on how to greenwash polluting infrastructure proposals.
It’s not simply a quid pro pro – here’s some cash and you do what I want – it’s about creating a relationship of mutual interestTom Mills
Tom Mills, a researcher on political donations, attributes such scandals to a systemic shift in Labour after 1997. New Labour figures “wanted to insulate themselves” against political pressure from the party so sought funding from “high net-worth individuals” rather than unions, Mills argues. He adds that the party’s increased reliance on wealthy donors may have limited its responsiveness to ordinary members.
Embodying this trend, Mendelsohn worked as a fundraiser for then-PM Gordon Brown during the 2007 ‘Donorgate’ scandal, which revealed he was seemingly aware for months that a wealthy donor had anonymously funneled over £600,000 to Labour through proxies.
I had at first thought this was Lord Mandelson of Jeffrey Epstein fame…this Lord Mandelson:
The happiest day of my life… Mandelson finally marries his partner of 27 years
By Jo Macfarlane
29 Oct 2023
LABOUR peer Peter Mandelson has spoken movingly about why he has married his long-term partner at the age of 70. The veteran politician nicknamed ‘the Prince of Darkness’ said he was ‘delighted’ to have finally tied the knot with Brazilian…
Yet more embarrassment for the Prime Minister over his close links to wealthy peers. Lord Mandelson, one of Keir Starmer‘s key advisers, is under investigation by the lobbying regulator.
The Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists is looking into the former business secretary’s public affairs firm Global Counsel ‘in relation to potentially inaccurate quarterly information returns’.
Only last week, Labour donor Lord Alli, who has given Starmer thousands of pounds in designer clothes and spectacles, apologised to the House of Lords over four breaches of Parliament’s rules relating to his declaration of financial interests.
Now Global Counsel, founded by Mandelson, a former EU trade commissioner, is under investigation over claims it lobbied British ministers on behalf of the state-backed Qatar Free Zones Authority while failing to list the Qatar authority as a Global client.
Mandelson is close to the Labour high command. Before the election, Global Counsel spent £36,000 seconding a staff member to the office of then shadow treasury minister Tulip Siddiq.
Getting back to the first article, it goes on to talk about a billionaire donor, Trevor Chinn:
Foreign policy, Labour Friends of Israel and Zionist donors
The idea of an ‘Israel lobby’ remains controversial. Yet groups such Labour Friends of Israel clearly have significant political ties, including to Bristol MPs – Darren Jones, Karin Smyth, and Dan Norris have all been listed supporters.
LFI and its Tory counterpart Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) advocate for British support of Israel. In 2022 it was reported that over 10 years, 320 MPs’ trips to Israel had been funded mostly by LFI and CFI.
In March, during Israel’s escalating use of violence in the Gaza Strip, Damien Egan, MP for Bristol North East, accepted an LFI-funded trip costing £2,400, a month after his by-election victory in the now-defunct Kingswood seat. He justified it as an opportunity to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In response to questions from the Cable, Egan noted that, as someone with a local government background, he “was grateful to join a delegation by [LFI] to meet politicians, NGOs and peace activists in both Israel and the West Bank.” He added that “although the delegation was focused on meeting people from the political left,” there were “balanced” perspectives “not shying away” from the region’s “difficult complexities”.
LFI-linked donors have also donated to other local Labour MPs. Sir Trevor Chinn, a prominent British Zionist (or advocate for the existence of an independent Jewish state), longtime LFI supporter and funder/director of Labour Together, donated £2,000 to Dan Norris in July 2024 and £2,500 to Egan in August 2023, and £50,000 to Starmer’s 2020 leadership campaign.
Other prominent Zionist donors, including Gary Lubner and Stuart Roden, have more recently started contributing to Labour’s Bristol MPs. Former Autoglass boss Lubner donated £5,000 to Damien Egan in July 2024 on top of the £4.5 million-plus he has donated to Labour and £600,000 to Labour Together since 2023.
Lubner has been a patron of United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA), an influential Zionist NGO, since at least 2016. UJIA, where Chinn is president for life, describes itself as having “decades of experience in sending young Jews in the UK to Israel on rite of passage programmes” including “birthright” to strengthen relationships with the country. The organisation faced criticism in 2022 for housing participants in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, Roden, a chairman of Tel Aviv-based venture capital firm Hetz Ventures, contributed £5,000 in July 2024 to Dan Norris, and more than £1.5 million to Labour overall since 2023.
Mills warns against simply seeing political donations as a “quid pro quo – I give you some cash and you do what I want”. Instead, there are powerful individuals wanting access to “a party they’re [ideologically] committed to… it’s creating a relationship of mutual interest and presumably a social and political relationship”.
And an article by Nasim Ahmed goes into more detail. It was published in September 2025, but I suppose I have been totally distracted by the shocking events emanating from ‘over the pond’
The UK Labour Party has been rocked by yet another scandal and is facing scrutiny over revelations that its leadership has been captured by a network of unelected funders and lobbyists with deep ties to Israel and Zionist organisations.
At the centre of the controversy is Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s powerful chief of staff, and his long-time association with billionaire businessman Trevor Chinn. Documents and leaks show that between 2017 and 2020, McSweeney oversaw Labour Together, a factional project that secretly accepted more than £730,000 (around $930,000) in undeclared donations, allegedly in breach of electoral law.
Much of this money is said to have come from Chinn, a figure whose involvement in Labour politics has for decades been bound up with the defence of Israel and the advancement of Zionist networks inside the party.
Chinn is no ordinary donor. A director of Labour Together until 2024, he has bankrolled both Conservative and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) throughout his career. In early 2025, he was awarded the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honour by President Isaac Herzog for his services to the apartheid state. Chinn’s commitment to Israel has been described as one of his “animating concerns” over three decades of political donations.
An investigation by Jody McIntyre, who stood as a candidate for the Workers Party in the last general election, shows how deeply enmeshed Chinn became with McSweeney’s project. McSweeney reportedly concealed donations “to protect Trevor” from scrutiny, according to McIntyre’s investigation. Labour Together, however, later dismissed the failure to declare the funds as an “administrative error,” a line advised by solicitor Gerald Shamash, another Labour figure with a record of blocking debates on sanctions against Israel.
Chinn’s influence was not limited to donations. According to minutes of a 2020 meeting revealed by Electronic Intifada, Chinn and five other lobbyists set up a “regular channel of communication” with Labour MP Steve Reed, a close ally of McSweeney and vocal supporter of LFI. The leaked record illustrates the extent to which pro-Israel lobbyists were embedded in Labour’s factional leadership project.
McSweeney’s own ties to Zionism go back further than his dealings with Chinn. In his youth, he spent time living on Sarid, a Zionist settlement built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Ikhneifis. There, he is said to have become closely acquainted with Hashomer Hatza’ir, a Zionist movement that played a central role in Israel’s settler-colonial project.
McIntyre’s research and internal documents allege that McSweeney campaigned for Steve Reed—who is known to have received funding from LFI for travel to occupied Palestine—and later worked closely with Margaret Hodge, a self-declared Zionist. Some sources also suggest McSweeney oversaw Liz Kendall’s 2015 leadership run, during which she made public statements against boycotts and sanctions of Israel—though the precise nature and funding of these campaigns remain under investigation.
By 2017, McSweeney was director of Labour Together, where Chinn sat on the board. Internal documents revealed that the group’s work included secret projects to undermine Jeremy Corbyn by inflaming the anti-Semitism crisis, planting hostile media stories, and fracturing the party’s left wing.
McSweeney, according to Double Down News, even devised a covert strategy dubbed Operation Red Shield, aimed at “burning down” Corbyn’s Labour in order to capture the party for a pro-business, pro-Israel faction.
The secret funding allowed McSweeney to commission hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of polling into the Labour membership. This research shaped Starmer’s leadership campaign, presenting him as a “unity” candidate who pledged to uphold policies such as public ownership and a Green New Deal.
However, once elected, Starmer rapidly U-turned on those commitments, dropping all ten of his leadership pledges. The sequence of events suggests that Starmer’s campaign positions were adopted to secure victory rather than to be implemented in government.
Starmer’s subsequent record confirmed that pattern of deception. Within months of becoming leader, he ditched all ten of his leadership pledges and moved Labour sharply to the right. On Palestine, Starmer has repeatedly echoed Israeli government narratives, refusing to condemn the genocide while expelling Labour members who criticised Israel.
While Trevor Chinn is central to this latest scandal, he is not the only pro-Israel donor bankrolling Labour. Since Starmer’s election, the party has increasingly relied on wealthy businessmen with strong ties to Zionist organisations.
One of these is Gary Lubner, the South African-born former CEO of Autoglass, who has donated more than £5 million ($6.3 million) to Labour. Lubner’s family fortune was built during apartheid South Africa, when his father and uncle were accused of helping to bust international sanctions.
Today, Lubner is a major supporter of the United Jewish Israel Appeal, a fundraising arm for Israeli causes. His son Jack is active in the Jewish Labour Movement and other pro-Israel networks.
Lubner’s uncle Bertie was a major donor to Ben-Gurion University, an institution identified by human rights groups as complicit in Israel’s apartheid system. Under Starmer’s leadership, Labour has drawn heavily on donations from pro-Israel businessmen such as Lubner, underlining the party’s financial dependence on figures with strong political and financial ties to Israel.
The cumulative effect of these revelations is stark: Labour under Starmer has been captured by a narrow, unrepresentative network of pro-Israel donors and lobbyists. Their influence was decisive in undermining Corbyn’s leadership, installing Starmer, and silencing members who demanded a just policy on Palestine.
As Israel’s genocide in Gaza has killed more than 68,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, the Labour government has aligned itself with Israeli war crimes—refusing to halt arms sales, authorising surveillance flights over Gaza and granting Israel political cover on the international stage.
Labour’s latest scandal is not simply about undeclared donations. It speaks to the hollowing out of democracy inside Labour and its subordination to interests directly tied to the Israeli state. Decisions in Labour today are shaped less by members or voters than by figures like McSweeney, Chinn and Lubner—unelected operators whose record and affiliations show a consistent commitment to defending Israel, often over the views of party members.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
borderslynn 