Lord Mandelson’s Labour lobbying surge - what are the potential US ambassador's business interests?

Lord Mandelson may be appointed as British ambassador to the US Credit: PA

As I mentioned on last week’s Talking Politics, Lord Mandelson may well be appointed as Keir Starmer’s person in Washington, British ambassador to the US - though I am told no decision or announcement is imminent.

Given that so much of the ambassadorial job will be to promote the UK’s economic interests - and this may well be even more important with protectionist Trump in the White House - I took a look at Mandelson’s business interests, in case they are relevant to his appointment.

He is co-founder and president of a business consultancy Global Counsel. Who are its clients?

Part of the answer is provided by Global Counsel’s filing with the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists, the statutory body that provides some kind of transparency about business interests that are bending the ear of ministers and the most senior civil servants, permanent secretaries.

The register, set up by David Cameron in a 2014 law, is supposed to shine a light on the lobbying of senior government people that since time immemorial has taken place on behalf of vested interests. This transparency is designed to protect the public interest.

There were two intriguing disclosures in the register about Mandelson and Global Counsel.

One is that in the three months since July, which is when Labour won its landslide, Mandelson’s firm - whose other co-founder, Ben Wegg-Prosser, was a special adviser during Blair’s terms in office - received payment for “consultant lobbying” from 23 leading firms and institutions. That’s pretty good going.

This is all in accordance with the rules. But it demonstrates the financial value of who you know. Because in the preceding six months, when the Tories were in office, Global Counsel disclosed zero lobbying clients.Its latest list is strikingly blue chip. Here it is:

  • Accenture

  • Anglo American

  • Duolingo

  • Elliott

  • English Premier League

  • GSK

  • Howden

  • Index Ventures

  • JP Morgan

  • M&G

  • Nestle UK and Ireland

  • OpenAI

  • Palantir

  • Pernod Ricard

  • Robinhood

  • Santander UK

  • Sequoia

  • Shell

  • Sizewell C

  • Standard Chartered

  • TikTok

  • Vodafone

  • Water UK

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Many of these businesses and institutions have powerful financial reasons for wanting to influence ministers and top officials.

The likes of the Premier League, GSK, Open AI, Palantir, TikTok, Vodafone and Water UK are not paying Global Counsel for lobbying services out of vanity: it is a commercial investment.

That a US data analytics business like Palantir, which has an appetite for more contracts in the UK public sector, especially in the NHS and defence, would want to lobby government is as surprising as the duck that quacked.

But as I said, here is what stood out. The official register shows that in the preceding three month period, and the quarter before that, and for much of the past few years, Global Counsel had zero lobbying clients.

It had seven in the last three months of 2023. But otherwise the register says businesses were not paying it for government lobbying over a period of years.

In other words, Global Counsel’s services seemingly became super attractive to powerful companies - operating in AI, healthcare, top flight football, water and so on - when Labour took power.

If there needed a demonstration that lobbying is as much about personal connections as high quality analysis, then this is it.

Such I suppose is predictable. But somehow for a lobbying famine to turn to feast on this scale was more dramatic than I expected. Perhaps I am naive.

The second disclosure was that Global Counsel has TikTok as a client. When I first saw this, I remembered that in his first term as president, Trump viewed Chinese TikTok as as an enemy of the American state.

I wondered if working for TikTok would complicate Mandelson’s relationship with a Trump Whitehouse, if he were to become His Excellency the ambassador.

But Trump has done his habitual 180 degree shift and now says that he is the champion of TikTok and would save it from the closure threatened by President Joe Biden.

So working for TikTok probably won’t complicate or frustrate Mandelson’s hopes of securing that dream Washington posting. Though as I said, the decision to appoint him has not yet been made.

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