Sir Trevor Chinn avoids our questions about his political donations, 9 July 2025 (Photo: Alex Morris / Declassified UK)
We asked Sir Trevor Chinn why he’s donated so much money to Labour, after he held an undisclosed meeting with Britain’s foreign secretary.
David Lammy held an off the record meeting with Sir Trevor Chinn, an influential businessman and one of Britain’s leading pro-Israel lobbyists, Declassified can reveal.
The meeting took place on 11 February 2025 but was not recorded in official transparency data published by the Foreign Office.
Lammy’s sole public appointment on that day was a meeting with the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator to discuss “humanitarian crises around the globe” including the situation in Gaza.
The Foreign Office only released details about Lammy’s meeting with Chinn in response to a Freedom of Information request issued by Declassified.
It said this was a “political meeting” and no minutes from the discussion were taken.
The Foreign Office also disclosed that Middle East minister Hamish Falconer met with Chinn on 18 March 2025 in another rendezvous that was not recorded in transparency data.
Lammy, Falconer and Chinn did not respond to questions about whether the meetings focussed on Israel.
Chinn said in 2013: “I’ve spent my entire life working for Israel”. Since the 1980s, he has funded Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel.
He has played a leading role in Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), previously described by the Guardian as “Britain’s most active pro-Israel lobbying organisation”.
Doorstepping Chinn
Declassified recently revealed that Chinn – now 90 – met with a top British diplomat to discuss arms exports to Israel despite the government initially claiming the purpose of the meeting was “to discuss geopolitics”.
Chinn did not respond to Declassified’s request for comment on that story. So when we saw him disembarking a taxi outside the Chatham House think-tank in London last month, we quickly asked him for an interview.
Chinn, gripping a copy of the Financial Times, declined our request.
“You’re a very generous benefactor to the Labour Party,” we said as he was ushered inside. “What do you think about the situation in Gaza at the moment? Why do you donate so much money to the Labour Party?”
He ignored our questions, which related to his £50,000 donation towards Keir Starmer’s Labour leadership campaign in 2020.
Chinn’s donation was not disclosed until after the election had taken place.
He has also donated to key members of Starmer’s cabinet including chancellor Rachel Reeves, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, health secretary Wes Streeting, education secretary Bridget Phillipson, culture secretary Lisa Nandy, and Lammy.
Chinn entered the building on the heels of Israeli opposition politician Yair Golan, who was in the capital for meetings with politicians, including Falconer, and local Zionist organisations.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Labour Party government ministers Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are partners complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide. The UK has provided Israel with arms, military and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.
He likes to keep a low profile. But Sir Trevor Chinn is one of the most powerful men in British politics.
The retired businessman has donated millions to politicians, facilitated Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s rise to power, helped destroy the movement around Jeremy Corbyn, and, above all, has made sure that both major parties support Israel and its expansionist project in the Middle East.
MintPress News profiles perhaps the most influential man in the pro-Israel lobby and lifts the veil of anonymity he hides behind.
Israel’s Man
In November, President Isaac Herzog personally awarded Chinn the Israeli Medal of Honor for his “service to the state [of Israel] and the Jewish people.” The past year, President Herzog said in his presentation speech, was “the most difficult since the founding of the state.” However, he noted, his country was extremely fortunate to have “great friends and supporters in the world who fight alongside us against antisemitism, defend Israel’s name in the media, and have long fought for Israel’s place among the nations.”
Chinn has a decades-long history of promoting Israeli interests in the United Kingdom and beyond. In 2005, as co-chairman of the Israel-Britain Business Council, he led a delegation to Israel to participate in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Conference for Export and International Cooperation. The conference was an attempt to bring back economic growth to Israel after three years of stagnation as a result of the Second Palestinian intifada.
In 2018, he co-hosted a high-profile celebration of former Israeli President Chaim Herzog attended by some of the most powerful figures in British politics, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair. Held at the exclusive Spencer House in London, the event celebrated the British-born president, honoring him as a “warrior and statesman.” Herzog was an officer in the Israeli military during the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of around 750,000 Palestinians in order to establish the State of Israel.
As the longstanding president of United Jewish Israel Appeal, a group that aims to increase British Jews’ connections to Israel, Chinn has helped to raise millions to fund free birthright-style trips to the Middle East. One 2023 event at London’s Kensington Palace alone raised £1 million (U.S. $1.36 million). The function was attended by former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who praised his work profusely.
Chinn’s ties to Israel go far beyond economics and culture. Last October, at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza, the 89-year-old tycoon quietly met with the U.K. Foreign Office to advise them on arms exports to Israel. Officially, the British government claimed they were merely “discussing geopolitics with [a] businessman.” Documents obtained by investigative journalist John McEvoy, however, revealed the real purpose of the meeting was far less innocent.
Bankrolling the British Cabinet
Chinn, McEvoy told MintPress, plays an “important but overlooked role in British politics.” Since the 1980s, he noted, Chinn has funded both Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), pressure groups within the U.K.’s two largest political parties. He was also a member of the executive committee of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), the most influential pro-Israel lobbying organization in the United Kingdom.
“Quantitative analyses of these groups’ activities are instructive,” McEvoy said, adding:
Eighty percent of Tory MPs are members of CFI and, between 2012 and 2022, the organization paid for elected members to go on more overseas trips than any other donor. Last year, LFI counted some 75 MPs as supporters, while 32 sitting Labour members had accepted funding from the group. For its part, BICOM has flown scores of journalists to Tel Aviv since the turn of the century.”
As such, Chinn sits at the head of a massive influence operation aiming to make sure that Great Britain continues to support Israeli interests. The scope of this operation is staggering; pro-Israel lobby groups have funded the majority of the British cabinet. In total, 13 out of 25 sitting cabinet members have accepted money directly from Chinn, or pro-Israel groups, according to McEvoy’s investigation.
This includes many extremely powerful figures, such as Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Chinn himself has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to these individuals.
Without a doubt, though, the most important recipient of his largesse is Prime Minister Keir Starmer himself. In 2020, Chinn donated £50,000 (approximately $68,000) to Starmer, bankrolling his campaign to become leader of the Labour Party. The donation was not registered until five days after the election.
It was around this time that Starmer very publicly began to shift his position on Israel. Until 2019, he had been a member of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, and promised to “put human rights at the heart of foreign policy.” Yet just a few weeks after he received Chinn’s money, he publicly stated, “I support Zionism without qualification.”
His administration has vocally supported Israel, sending weapons to the country and providing other military assistance from U.K. military bases in Cyprus. It has also cracked down on pro-Palestine protests at home and defended Israel in international bodies such as the United Nations. In 2021, Starmer’s office even went so far as to hire Assaf Kaplan, a former Israeli spy, to conduct what it calls “social listening” within the party.
Lowkey, a rapper, activist, and host of “The Watchdog” on MintPress, has tracked Chinn’s activities closely, stating that:
Trevor Chinn is a key officer of the Zionist movement in this country. He is a vehicle through which the Israel lobby is able to fund key political figures, like Keir Starmer and David Lammy, and thus extend Israeli influence over what happens in British politics.”
Shaping the Labour Party
Tony Blair was the driving force behind Labour’s move away from social democracy and its embrace of big business, and Chinn’s cash helped make it possible. According to a 1996 report in The Independent, Chinn was one of several Labour megadonors who each contributed around £500,000 to bankroll Blairism and ensure its success.
Along with its economic approach, Labour’s traditional foreign policy positions also shifted. As former chairman of LFI, Baron Mendelsohn approvingly noted at the time,
Blair has attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party. Old Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs to support, but the milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Labour Friends of Israel meetings.”
To this day, Blair maintains a close relationship with Israel. He is a patron of the Jewish National Fund, the largest builder of illegal settlements in the West Bank. His wife, Cherie, meanwhile, worked as an adviser to NSO Group, the controversial Israeli software firm behind the Pegasus spying software.
Chinn (left) looks at British Prime Minister David Cameron during a Jewish Leadership Council meeting at 10 Downing Street, Jan. 16, 2012. Kirsty Wigglesworth | AP
Since Blair, Chinn has continued to fund senior Labour figures. The one notable exception was during Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure, from 2015 to 2020. Corbyn, a lifelong socialist, anti-imperialist, and advocate for Palestinian statehood, was unexpectedly elected leader of the party in a landslide.
Almost immediately, senior figures in the Labour establishment began organizing against him. And they were helped by Chinn’s money and connections.
Chinn provided the financial backing for Labour Together, a think tank of right-wing figures with the stated goal of “defeat[ing] Corbynism,” and “win[ning] Labour back from the left.” He also financed the political ambitions of Corbyn opponents, including Owen Smith, Ruth Smeeth, and Deputy Leader Tom Watson. Corbyn was relentlessly attacked from all sides and suffered constant accusations of antisemitism designed to undermine public support for his project.
Also in Labour Together’s crosshairs were Corbyn-supporting media outlets, such as The Canary. A left-wing alternative media site, The Canary rapidly expanded its reach to 8.5 million monthly viewers. Labour Together devised a plan to, in their own words, “Kill The Canary.” To that end, they launched a sham “stop funding fake news” drive, claiming the outlet was spreading antisemitic content, and putting pressure on advertisers to pull their commercials from the site. Like the campaign against Corbyn, the antisemitism claims were false, but effective, and The Canary’s finances and reach were dealt a serious blow.
Equal Opportunities Oligarch
Chinn, however, is far from a strictly partisan donor. The elderly business magnate has also funded the Conservative Friends of Israel, the Tory equivalent of Labour Friends of Israel. CFI is, if anything, more influential than its Labour counterpart. Publicly available data shows that the organization has funded at least 118 Conservative members of parliament to travel to Israel on 160 occasions, providing over £330,000 (U.S. $450,000) towards the visits. Around 80% of Conservative MPs are members of CFI.
CFI wields significant influence within the halls of power, enough to force Prime Minister Boris Johnson to drop his plans to appoint Alan Duncan as his Middle East Minister. In his memoirs, Duncan noted that their opposition was “for no other reason than that I believe in the rights of the Palestinians.” Johnson was reportedly indignant. “They [the Israelis] shouldn’t behave like this,” he said. “The CFI and the Israelis think they control the Foreign Office. And they do!’” Duncan said, adding that Israeli penetration into British politics amounts to what he called “entrenched espionage” and a national security threat.
Going further back, Chinn repeatedly lobbied the administration of John Major (1990-1997) on its Middle East policy. “He can be quite a tough protagonist of the Israeli cause and is by no means a dove… My own feeling is that he is not very subtly tuned into the Israeli political scene,” one Foreign Office official wrote about Chinn in 1991.
The overall goal of his activities—the political donations, private meetings, funded trips and media work—McEvoy told MintPress, is to “persuade politicians and journalists that supporting Israel is in their interests.” Chinn and the wider pro-Israel lobby employ a “carrot and stick approach,” whereby good behavior is rewarded with free trips, favorable media coverage and political donations, and bad behavior is punished with a loss of funding, political flak, and pressure campaigns. Thus, McEvoy concludes:
While many legislators in Britain are already avowed Zionists and need little persuading, the carrot and stick approach can achieve an important disciplining effect on politicians who are either equivocal or easily shunned into silence, which accounts for a significant proportion given the extent of careerism and cowardice present in Westminster.”
You Can Cut Down the Flowers, But You Can’t Stop the Spring
Sir Trevor Chinn is far from a self-made man. He inherited his substantial wealth and power from his father, Rosser, who owned the automotive giant, Lex Services, now called the Royal Automobile Club (RAC). In addition to his business interests, Rosser was also the president of the Jewish National Fund, helping Israel dispossess Palestinians of their land.
Trevor served as chief executive of the RAC and later became chairman of its chief competitors, the Automobile Association (AA) and Kwik Fit. Since 1973, he has served as president of the United Jewish Israel Appeal and holds or has held a number of other significant positions of influence. These include serving as a governor of Tel Aviv University, and his positions on the executive committees of the Jewish Leadership Council and BICOM.
In 2023, BICOM participated in an attempt to remove the music of MintPress’ Lowkey from the streaming service Spotify. Their plan failed, thanks to massive public pushback and widespread resistance from top names in the entertainment industry.
“I was, at that time, identified as a key target. But we defeated them, thanks to MintPress, The Electronic Intifada, and all the amazing people who supported me,” Lowkey said. “It really does go to show that these lobby groups are really only powerful when they are not confronted.”
One successful cancellation operation Chinn did participate in, however, was the 2014 campaign against a north London arts venue. After finding out that the event was sponsored by the Israeli Embassy, the Tricycle Theater refused to host the U.K. Jewish Film Festival.
Israel, at the time, had just launched Operation Protective Edge, a bombardment of Gaza that killed over 2,000 people. Chinn sprang into action, threatening to pull his funding from the theater unless they reversed their decision. “We are as a community under pressure from the boycott movement. We can’t accept boycotts and whenever one comes along we have to fight it,” he said.
Tricycle was eventually forced to concede after Culture Minister Sajid Javid—himself a member of Conservative Friends of Israel—“made it absolutely clear what might happen to their funding if they, or if anyone, tries that kind of thing again.”
For all his work, though, Chinn has not been able to stem the tide of pro-Palestinian sentiment across the United Kingdom and beyond. In November 2023, an estimated one million people attended a London demonstration calling for a ceasefire.
Since then, polling shows that public attitudes towards Israel have only hardened.
A recent YouGov survey found that more than twice as many Britons support Palestine (32%) as Israel (14%). Only 17% of the country holds positive views of Israel (including 4% that are very positive), compared to 63% negative (including 39% that are highly negative). And the vast majority of the country supports an arms embargo, with only 13% opposing an end to weapons sales to Tel Aviv. Worse still for Israel, these are among the best numbers in Europe for their cause.
In response, both Conservative and Labour governments have cracked down on public support for Palestine, suppressing demonstrations, arresting protesters, and harassing and intimidating pro-Palestine journalists.
How much, if any, influence Chinn had on these responses is a matter of debate. But what is incontrovertible is that he and his network of pro-Israel organizations are not an omnipotent force. This is especially true when they and their activities are exposed to the wider public.
Feature photo | Sir Trevor Chinn (left), pictured alongside Jacob Rothschild (center) and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (right) | Editing by MintPress News
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party government Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves explain that they are participants and complicit in Israel’s Gaza genocide providing Israel with army and air force support. They explain that they don’t do gas chambers but do do forced marches, starvation, destroy hospitals, mass-murders of journalists and healthcare workers.Vote Labour for Genocide.Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
Hedge fund Quadrature Capital has given £4m to Keir Starmer’s Labour – the largest donation in the party’s history | Jack Taylor – WPA Pool / Getty Images
Quadrature’s donation is noteworthy not just for being Labour’s largest-ever, but for its timing ahead of election
The Labour Party’s largest-ever donation came from a Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund with shares worth hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuels, private health firms, arms manufacturers and asset managers.
While the £4m donation by Quadrature Capital is the sixth-largest in British political history, it is noteworthy not just for its size, but also its timing.
Electoral Commission records suggest Labour received the donation in the one-week window between former prime minister Rishi Sunak announcing the general election and the start of the ‘pre-poll reporting period’ in which all political donations over £11,180 had to be published weekly, rather than the quarterly norm.
This means that despite being made on 28 May, Quadrature’s generous donation was published by the Electoral Commission only last week, more than two months after Labour won the election.
Neither the Labour Party press office nor No 10 responded to openDemocracy’s questions on whether the timing of accepting this donation was intended to minimise scrutiny and critical coverage during the election.
Paul Holden, an investigative journalist and author of The Fraud, a forthcoming book on Starmer’s leadership, told openDemocracy that the donation’s timing fits the Starmer project’s pattern of delaying the disclosure of potentially sensitive or controversial political donations.
Holden said: “Sir Keir Starmer and the organisations close to him have an unfortunate history of reporting donations in controversial ways.
“During his bid to become leader of the Labour Party, Starmer refused to contemporaneously publish details of who had donated to his leadership campaign. His rivals, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy, agreed to share details of their donors in real-time, which they published. Starmer, however, decided only to declare his donations via his MP’s register of interests, which created a significant lag between when Starmer accepted his donations and when they were made public.
“Labour members, as a result, had no idea at the time of voting that Starmer had been funded with large donations from the likes of wealthy millionaires like Martin Taylor and Sir Trevor Chinn and Baron Waheed Ali; the latter now at the centre of the furore about Starmer’s acceptance of gratuities.”
Holden also referred to a fine issued by the Electoral Commission to Starmerite think tank Labour Together in 2021 for its failure to declare donations worth more than £800,000 – including £730,000 received while it was under the directorship of Starmer’s key adviser and No 10’s director of political strategy, Morgan McSweeney.
openDemocracy has consistently reported on Labour’s increasingly strong ties with the financial sector in recent years.
The party has received more than £8m from businesses or people linked to the financial industry since Starmer became leader in 2020 and now boasts two multi-million-pound donors from the world of hedge funds; Quadrature and Taylor, who has managed several billion-dollar funds over his career.
While Quadrature had not donated to Labour before May, one of its senior employees has contributed significantly to the party under Starmer. Daniel Luhde-Thompson, a strategic adviser at the firm, has given the party more than £500,000 this year, according to the Electoral Commission.
Transparency campaigners have warned Quadrature’s huge donation raises questions about what the financial sector is getting in return.
Rose Whiffen, senior research officer at Transparency International UK told openDemocracy: “When the public see political parties relying on such large sums of money in donations from private sources, it understandably raises questions as to in whose interest politicians are working and can give the impression our democracy is for sale.
“More must be done to take this kind of big money out of politics. The new government should commit to introducing caps on individual donations to tackle this problem [and] restore public trust in how our democracy functions.”
Green Party co-leader Zack Polanski told openDemocracy that the donation shows Labour now “stands for multi-millionaires and billionaires over our working-class communities”.
Polanski said: “Far from being the party in service of working people, Starmer’s Labour Party seems indebted to the bankers and bosses who profit from pillaging our public services and our planet.
“Simply ‘following the rules’ and declaring donations isn’t enough to cast aside the doubts that the main parties have their loyalties tested by big donors. It’s time to implement strict rules on funding political parties, including a cap on how much any individual or business can donate to politics. Elections should be won by the people with the best ideas, not the parties with the biggest donors.”
Registered in the Cayman Islands
Quadrature Capital has a diversified share portfolio worth around $6bn, according to records filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month.
After its donation was made public last week, the firm shared a statement on its website.
It said: “In May 2024, we came to the view that a UK government with a commitment to the green transition of the economy would have the ability to drive change that is so urgently needed. Having analysed commitments set out by each party, we donated £4m to The Labour Party, in support of policies that will deliver climate action while also promoting social equity and economic resilience.
“This was a values-based donation, not a political donation, as Quadrature Capital Ltd remains non-partisan and apolitical. Going forward, our private giving will continue to be led by our values, and any further donations to political parties will depend on the parties’ commitments, track record and alignment with our mission for sustainable and equitable growth.”
Last year, the Guardian reported that despite donating to environmental charities through its climate foundation, Quadrature had holdings in fossil fuel companies worth more than $170m. The paper highlighted three holdings in particular with major polluters: ConocoPhillips, Cheniere Energy and Cenovus Energy.
openDemocracy’s analysis of the firm’s latest SEC filings shows that Quadrature has since increased its holdings in Cenovus, which was this year fined millions for an oil spill that released 250,000 litres into the Atlantic Ocean. Quadrature has scaled back its holdings with the other two firms but has taken up a major $67m stake in ExxonMobil, one of the largest oil and gas producers in the world.
Among Quadrature Capital’s other investments, its largest holding is in Apple, valued at $231m, and among its 10 largest holdings are other ‘bluechip’ stocks like Amazon, Shopify and Costco.
Quadrature also maintains significant holdings in the arms manufacturers Northrop Grumman ($31m) and Lockheed Martin ($6m); US private healthcare companies such as UnitedHealth ($31m) and HCA Healthcare ($16m); some of the largest asset management companies like Blackstone ($22m) and KKR ($7m), who potentially stand to benefit significantly from Labour’s plans to utilise private investment for infrastructure; and tech firms, including Palantir ($71m) and Oracle ($8m).
UK accounts filings for the firm show profits before tax of more than £230m in the financial year ending 31 January 2023, but paid corporation tax of only £5.3m. As is noted in the accounts, had the firm paid the standard rate of UK corporation tax of 19% during that period, this would have amounted to more than £43m.
The UK-based fund paid out £343m in wages last year – an average of £3m for each of its 113 employees – while back in 2021 one of its founders was eyeing a luxury central London penthouse valued at around £110m, according to a report by Bloomberg that cited “two people with knowledge of the transaction”.
openDemocracy can reveal that Quadrature was last year acquired by QC Ventures, a company registered in the Cayman Islands, which is now the 100% shareholder in the firm.
The Cayman Islands is a well-known tax haven, and the transparency requirements for companies registered there are much less than in the UK and most other countries.
Documents obtained by openDemocracy show that when QC Ventures was established in the Cayman Islands back in 2018, its directors were three senior directors at Quadrature and a corporate services provider based in Cayman.
Speaking in the Commons in July, Labour’s foreign secretary David Lammy pledged to tackle individuals and companies taking advantage of offshore tax havens “with full vigour”.
He added: “We were concerned that parts of the last government were turning a blind eye to these issues. I hope to come forward with further proposals in the coming weeks.”
When openDemocracy contacted Quadrature to ask about the donation and the acquisition by QC Ventures, a representative of the firm directed us to the statement on the company’s website. They also said the decision to set up a holding company based in the Cayman Islands to acquire Quadrature was not motivated by, or related to, taxation.
Robert Palmer, director of Tax Justice UK, said that “any company moving to a tax haven like the Cayman Islands has questions to answer” as the islands are “notorious for a lack of transparency and for ultra-low taxes”.
“Ultimately governments need to make sure that everyone is paying their fair share in tax, especially when public services are desperately in need of investment and we need to fund the transition to a greener economy,” he said.
Fran Boait, co-executive director at Positive Money, said: “In taking large donations from financial firms registered in tax havens, we have to question what influence the sector is getting in return.
“Labour’s plans to continue the previous government’s deregulation of the City of London are particularly concerning, especially when it has been shown that an oversized financial sector hinders rather than helps the rest of the economy.
“Labour should be looking at how to weaken the power of big finance in our democracy and economy. Right now it seems they are doing the opposite.”
Wes Streeting, Peter Kyle and Jonathan Reynolds leave Starmer’s first cabinet meeting. (Photo: Alamy)
Declassified Exclusive: Labour’s top team has accepted over £600,000 from pro-Israel funders.
Pro-Israel lobbyists have donated to 13 out of Labour’s 25 cabinet members since they were first elected to parliament, Declassified can reveal.
The list of recipients includes prime minister Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, chancellor Rachel Reeves, foreign secretary David Lammy and home secretary Yvette Cooper.
Jonathan Reynolds, who will oversee arms exports to Israel as UK trade secretary, is another beneficiary, alongside Labour’s election mastermind Pat McFadden, whose responsibilities now include national security.
Some of the donations were provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a lobby group which takes MPs on “fact-finding” missions to the region.
Reeves, McFadden, Reynolds and technology secretary Peter Kyle were recently listed as vice-chairs of LFI.
Other major funders include pro-Israel businessmen Gary Lubner, Trevor Chinn, and Stuart Roden.
The total value of the donations amounts to over £600,000.
…
Vote For Genocide Vote Labour.Zionist Keir Starmer is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
Some 13 of the 31 members of Labour’s shadow cabinet have received donations from a prominent pro-Israel lobby group or individual funder, it can be revealed.
The list of recipients includes party leader Keir Starmer, his deputy Angela Rayner, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy, and even the former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, Lisa Nandy, who is now shadow international development minister.
These donations were provided by Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a pro-Israel lobby group which takes MPs on “fact-finding” missions to the region, and Sir Trevor Chinn, a multi-millionaire business tycoon and long-time pro-Israel lobbyist.
More than half of Starmer’s shadow cabinet are listed as parliamentary supporters or officers of LFI.
…
Pro-Israel lobbying
Sir Trevor Chinn is a British multi-millionaire who has spent decades working in the motor industry, chairing such organisations as the AA, the RAC, and Kwikfit.
Chinn is also a longstanding pro-Israel lobbyist. Since the 1980s, he has funded LFI and Conservative Friends of Israel and played a leading role in groups such as Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) and the Jewish Leadership Council.
The Guardiandescribed BICOM in 2009 as “Britain’s most active pro-Israeli lobbying organisation – which flies journalists to Israel on fact-finding trips and organises access to senior government figures”.
It added that the organisation had “received nearly £1.4m in two years from a billionaire donor whose father made a fortune manufacturing arms in Israel”, referring to Poju Zabludowicz, a London-based business tycoon.
Starmer received a £50,000 donation from Chinn during his campaign for the Labour leadership in 2020 – and failed to declare this until after he’d won the election.
Declassified has found that Chinn has donated to eight other members of the shadow cabinet, including Rayner, Lammy, Reeves, Streeting, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson, shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall, and shadow environment secretary Steve Reed.
