Saturday 21st of September 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

a gift-giving gifted 59-year-old baron and lord....

Prime Minister Keir Starmer is under fire after media revelations that he failed to disclose pricey gifts of clothing to his wife from longtime Labour megadonor Waheed Alli. Who is the mysterious businessman, and what’s behind his ‘generosity’ to the Starmers?

Born in Croydon, England to Indo-Trinidadian and Indo-Guyanese parents in 1964, 59-year-old Baron and Lord Waheed Alli was described in a gushing 2000 BBC profile as a member of a “new generation” of Blairite “New Labour working peers appointed to revolutionize the House of Lords,” the UK’s upper chamber of parliament – “young, Asian and from the world of media and entertainment.”

Known in the UK as a TV producer involved in the creation of the hit reality show Survivor and a variety of morning programming, Alli’s work has been characterized by critics as the epitome of “TV presented by morons for morons” reducing “the standard for breakfast viewing to a positively subterranean low” by dumbing “down a genre some media experts thought impossible to dumb down any further.”

Getting his start in business in the 1980s as a researcher for a finance magazine, Alli reportedly got his big break after being tapped by media tycoon, fraudster and suspected Mossad operator Robert Maxwell – father of convicted child sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell. In the mid-80s, Alli became an investment banker in the City of London, and in the early 90s, got his start as a rising television media star, cofounding Planet 24 Productions with producer Charlie Parsons and musician Bob Geldof.

He’s also a fashion mogul, chairing and owning a stake in online fashion company ASOS.com until 2011, and founding Koovs, an Indian online clothing retailer, in 2012. Alli drove the latter company into bankruptcy in 2019, buying up stocks when share prices collapsed and small investors were left penniless. He is thought to have amassed a fortune of about £200 million (about $265 million US) through his various enterprises.

Alli wears his identity politics on his sleeve, expressing pride over his status as the youngest peer ever appointed to the House of Lords, and in being an openly-gay Muslim politician. But on issues that count, from the 2003 Iraq invasion to the war in Gaza, he has remained curiously silent.

Despite being assigned no formal role in Starmer’s cabinet, Alli has been characterized as the PM’s personal ‘fixer’, helping the politician in what the Financial Times characterized as Starmer’s “ruthless remaking of the Labour Party” following Jeremy Corbyn’s unceremonious ouster in 2020 on spurious “antisemitism” charges. Donating over £500,000 in cash to the party over the past two decades (£400,000 of that since Starmer became party leader), Alli was tapped as chair of election fundraising during the 2024 campaign to shift the party’s donation base from unions to the private sector.

Alli’s generosity vis-à-vis Labour and the Starmer family has apparently paid off. Last month, The Sunday Times revealed that he had been issued a temporary pass at the prime ministerial residence at Number 10 Downing Street.

In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, Tory shadow paymaster general John Glen found it “deeply concerning that a pass was granted to a Labour donor providing unfettered access to the heart of government after significant cash and non-cash donations were made to the Labour Party,” and “disappointing” that the party only responded to this “culture of cronyism after feeling the pressure in the media.” Shadow security Tom Tugendhat warned that Britons’ trust in politicians was being eroded thanks to “this type of sleaze and dishonesty, which is rotting our politics to its core.” Conservative media dubbed the scandal “passes for glasses” – a reference to reports that among the tens of thousands of pounds-worth of personal items bought for the Starmers by Alli’s personal shopper were clothing, alterations and eyeglasses.

No 10 did not indicate why Alli had been given the pass, but said recently that it was “given back several weeks ago,” and that the mogul did not attend any political meetings where civil servants were present.

In the aftermath of the Labour Party’s July election victory, Alli said that the win “has been far too long coming,” and urged Labour not to “waste the opportunity to implement change.” What sort of change he was talking about can only be guessed at.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240919/a-very-british-pay-to-play-story-who-is-waheed-alli-starmer-megadonor-and-robert-maxwell-protege-1120207402.html

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

just 33....

By the time Keir Starmer entered Downing Street, his ally and donor Waheed Alli had become so much a part of the Labour operation that no one at the top of the party was surprised to see him floating around the building. According to one person who knows both men, however, the millionaire business executive was surprised to find himself there.

“Waheed was an important part of Keir’s team during the election campaign, and so it was felt natural that he should get a pass,” they said. “The thing was, Waheed didn’t really know what he was doing there, so he handed it back.”

 

Alli’s access to Downing Street has come under scrutiny in recent weeks since he used it to help organise a reception for fellow donors in the garden of No 10. Labour says he held the pass to help with “transition work” once the party came into government, though it will not say what that work involved.

The controversy has intensified over the last 48 hours after it emerged Labour may have broken parliamentary rules by not declaring that Alli had donated high-end clothes to Starmer’s wife, Victoria.

The money is part of more than £700,000 the media entrepreneur has donated to the party during his life, about £50,000 of which has come this year. He has recently given clothes and spectacles to Starmer, leading some newspapers to call the controversy “passes for glasses”.

The prime minister defended the donations to his wife on Monday, pointing out his team had proactively approached the parliamentary authorities to find out if they needed to declare the donations.

Labour aides say the money has been essential in helping to present the prime minister and his wife as natural occupants of No 10. “If people are going to comment on what Vic wears every time she goes out, it is natural she wants to look the part,” said one.

Others say the controversy is undermining Starmer’s attempts to portray himself as the model of political probity.

Henry Newman, a former Conservative special adviser, said: “Politics relies on donors but transparency is essential to maintaining trust. No one has explained why Lord Alli had a Downing Street pass, and why he was reportedly allowed to organise a party in the garden.”

Alli did not respond to a request for comment.

This is not the first time Alli has found himself embroiled in a cronyism row. Similar accusations were made when Tony Blair appointed him the youngest ever life peer in 1998, at the age of just 33.

READ MORE:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/16/he-will-hate-this-profile-how-donor-waheed-alli-became-a-labour-fixer

 

READ FROM TOP

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

destructive....

Moscow has listed 47 countries whose “destructive attitudes” contradict Russian values, opening the path to their nationals to seek asylum in Russia if they so choose.

President Vladimir Putin signed a decree last month allowing foreigners who share Russia’s traditional values and disagree with the “neoliberal”agenda pushed by their own governments to apply for residency. 

On Friday, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin published the list of countries and territories that “implement policies that impose destructive neoliberal ideological attitudes contradicting traditional Russian spiritual and moral values.”

The list posted on the Russian government portal includes the following countries and territories: Australia, Austria, Albania, Andorra, the Bahamas, Belgium, Bulgaria, the UK, Germany, Greece, Denmark, Ireland, Iceland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Micronesia, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, South Korea, Romania, San Marino, North Macedonia, Singapore, the US, Taiwan (territory of China), Ukraine, Finland, France, Croatia, Montenegro, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Sweden, Estonia and Japan.

Notably absent from the list are EU and NATO members Slovakia and Hungary, as well as NATO member Türkiye.

Most of the designated countries previously made the register of “unfriendly” governments, first compiled in the spring of 2021 and updated in 2022. The states on that blacklist are subject to Russian diplomatic and economic countermeasures based on their hostile conduct.

Russia can “offer the world a safe haven for normalcy” by defending traditional values from the “wokeism catastrophe” that has come to dominate the collective West, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said on Thursday at the Fourth Eurasian Women’s Forum in St. Petersburg.

According to Putin’s edict from August, nationals of “destructive neoliberal” countries are eligible to seek temporary residence in Russia without having to satisfy the standard immigration requirements, such as national quotas, Russian language proficiency, and knowledge of Russian history and laws. 

The plan appears to have originated at a February symposium in Moscow, when Italian student Irene Cecchini presented the idea of “impatriation” to the Russian president. Cecchini urged Putin to streamline the immigration and naturalization process for foreigners who shared the “cultural, traditional and family values” of Russia, presenting it as a way to help the country overcome a demographic dip.

https://www.rt.com/russia/604397-russia-destructive-countries-list/

 

READ FROM TOP

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.