When you’re very rich there comes a time, for some, when the prospect of making even more money is a bit boring. After all, how many luxury homes, private jets or yachts do you really need? What you really want now is power.
Of course, money is power. But not the sort of power that determines or influences public policy, affects the course of world events, gets you into the room where historic decisions are taken – or even stops the traffic for your convoy of cars complete with motorcycle outriders, blue lights flashing.
Political power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, much sexier than mere financial power. Almost everything and everyone is at your beck and call.
I remember Tony Blair telling me not long after he entered Downing Street that one of the joys of being the top dog was that he could see anybody he wanted to see. After 11 years in No 10 he was so insulated from reality that it took him a while to get used to his car stopping at traffic lights.
No matter how many billions you’ve made in private equity, digital software or financial services, you don’t have that kind of power or influence. Unless, of course, you start to dabble in politics and cosy up to those – much poorer than you and vulnerable to being dazzled by your wealth – with the political power you envy.
Waheed Alli, a Labour peer since 1998, is reputed to be worth around £200million. Over the years, he has given around £700,000 to various rising Labour stars
How do you do that? Why, you use the currency with which you’re most familiar and have to excess – money.
Take the case of Waheed Alli, Labour peer since 1998 and the gift that just keeps on giving – as long as you’re a Labour politician. He’s reputed to be worth around £200million and over the years Alli has gifted around £700,000 to various rising Labour stars, including, in recent times, a total of £300,000 to seven members of the current Cabinet.
Keir Starmer has been the biggest beneficiary of that £300,000 pot, raking in over half of it in donations in cash and kind, including suits and specs for him, frocks for his wife and the use of Alli’s extensive property portfolio.
His deputy, Angela Rayner, has also had her snout in the Alli trough, the second biggest beneficiary on £72,000, some of it also in clothes.
Photographs suggest she’s not always chosen wisely.
The extent of Alli’s largesse is now widely known and it’s caused Labour, so pious and sanctimonious in opposition about Tory troughing, growing embarrassment, especially since Team Starmer seems to have no idea how to put this particular fire out. But the question rarely asked is this: what is Alli getting out of it?
Money can’t buy you love, the Beatles once sang, which is probably true. But in politics it can buy you access and at least the appearance of influence.
Alli loves to rub shoulders with the Labour elite and by showering the party with spondulicks he gets to do just that. Starmer even went round to his fancy flat in London to watch the exit poll result on election night.
His influence on policy, however, is not easy to gauge. As an enthusiast for Tony Blair’s New Labour project, he might be thought to be a benign influence on the party. He certainly wasn’t much in evidence during the dark, dangerous Jeremy Corbyn years.
Sir Keir Starmer broadcasts from Alli’s home in December 2021 with photos of his family in the background to make it appear like his own home
Alli has so far gifted £300,000 to seven members of the current Cabinet, including Sir Keir and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner
But he has dabbled in matters in which he shouldn’t and of which he knows little.
Using his proximity to the Blair project, he tried to meddle in Iraqi elections 20 years ago in a manner unhelpful to British interests. He has used the authority he gets from access to senior Labour figures to meet multiple times with Bashir al-Assad and argued that the brutal Syrian dictator should remain in power, contrary to British policy at the time.
Some of this is no doubt the result of naivety and inexperience. The problem with rich folks, in this regard, is twofold. Those who’ve made a ton of money doing one thing make the mistake of thinking they can succeed at anything.
But just because you’ve grown rich making widgets does not equip you to solve the Israeli-Palestine conflict.
The other problem is that business people are simply not very good at politics. Meeting the myriad demands of a complex democracy is far more complicated than boosting the bottom line of a company.
Most business people who go into politics bomb. Perhaps the only modern British exception is David Young, a wise, gentle Tory peer in Margaret Thatcher’s government in the 1980s.
‘David doesn’t bring me problems,’ she once observed approvingly, ‘he brings me solutions.’ I can’t think of any other recent business person turned politician who would merit such an accolade.
Sometimes even billionaires can overplay their hands. When one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs, Sir James Dyson, went to see then Chancellor Jeremy Hunt with a litany of complaints about government policy, Hunt was annoyed enough to tell the vacuum-cleaner tycoon that, if things were that bad, perhaps he should become an MP himself to put things right.
Many of Dyson’s criticisms were legitimate. But it’s hard not to sympathise with Hunt’s riposte.
Sir James has not followed Hunt’s advice. Most rich people who want political influence, like Alli, don’t seem to have a lust for power so much as a lust for access to the corridors of power.
It gives them a vicarious pleasure, they can dine out on it, it puts them one up on their peer group, even those in it who are richer. Alli’s largesse earned him a pass to 10 Downing Street (though it was quickly rescinded when it became public).
Rich people can also exercise political influence through media ownership. It’s why, for example, hedge fund owner Paul Marshall has paid an extraordinary £100million for The Spectator magazine (and invested in GB News before that, even though it will never make money).
Rupert Murdoch, the premier media mogul of our age, used to say media ownership gave him access to the top table. During the Blair years, Labour ministers complained that at times it often seemed he even had a seat at the table, the unnamed member of the Cabinet.
Murdoch, of course, used his access to lobby for his own business interests. But he also had a passion for public policy.
Obviously, he liked to make lots of money. But he also loved to argue about economic or foreign policy. It explains why he and Gordon Brown had a close relationship – until they fell out.
They were hardly political soulmates. But they were both political nerds.
There’s nothing new in rich people, especially those with time on their hands, trying to buy their way into the political process. Under the last Tory government a phalanx of folk far richer than Alli did exactly the same.
Many now sit in the House of Lords. Whether they ever made much of a difference to government policy is doubtful. though they will happily tell you that they did.
Rubbing shoulders with the rich often gets prime ministers into trouble, as Starmer is finding out the hard way. Whatever the row, it usually passes.
The current Freebiegate is unusual because Starmer and those around him don’t know how to close it down. Indeed, by saying this week he’d hand back £6,000 of the freebies, he merely stoked the scandal.
The continuing furore surrounding ‘Alli The Generous’ has revealed that Starmer (a career lawyer) is rather clunky, even amateur as a politician — and that his No 10 operation is so riven with faction-fighting that it can’t pull him out of a hole when he’s in one.
All that will continue to undermine this government long after the name of Waheed Alli has faded from the headlines.
