Forget Farage's salary - follow the (green) money

Ed Miliband has had a £99,000 donation from the Green Finance Institute

*Correction: (added Tuesday 3rd September): the £99k is a “value” amount - aka the advice from the Green Finance Institute Ltd has been “valued” at £99k.*

If you want to understand just how useless the UK media is, behold its reaction to Nigel Farage yesterday - after the latest register of members’ financial interests showed he’s the highest-earning MP.

Although we have 650 Members of Parliament and 404 in the Labour Party - ya know, those people running the country - the media is possessed by the man, its coverage of his activities more apt for a Prime Minister, or breakout in the Middle East, than leader of a five-person party.

Earlier I searched Google for “MP register of interests” (in the last 24 hours) and unsurprisingly it was Farage, Farage and more Farage…

Although 99% of the media will think they were justified in rushing to cover Farage’s registered interests - after all, just look at that BIG salary, which proves EVERYTHING - they behaved exactly how you’d expect “the Establishment” to. It’s the herd mentality that leads people to call them this term, their hyper-liberal worldview central to how they frame news and what they consider “in the public interest”.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely interesting how much Farage is paid and worthy of headlines. But what about the hundreds of other MPs and their interests? The register is journalistic gold on a plate but one gets the sense that Farage is “the story”, and the media are ready to move on…

Green greed

When I saw the register, my first instinct was to look for “green money”. In other words, any links between green industry and politicians. This is where I feel I can most be of value *although I really want to read the whole document, as this would be proper “journalism”. But being one-woman n all that…

I became interested in green money in April last year after seeing then-Conservative MP Chris Skidmore posting about Net Zero. Something about his enthusiasm made me think “hmm” and led me to trawl through his registered interests. Sure enough I found out he was paid £80,000 a year as an adviser to a decarbonisation/ eco company.

As far as I’m aware, I was the first journalist to cover the story (The Critic). I wrote quite tentatively at the time; with nothing to go on (coverage elsewhere) I was worried in case I’d got the wrong end of the stick or was about to libel. I just couldn’t believe no one had written about the fact an MP who signed Net Zero into law was paid by a company in the decarbonisation space. Was this not extremely interesting?

Nowadays you can see the public wants more information about this area, with Net Zero being so insanely expensive and life-altering. But the issue is that when things are “green” the media decides to clock off, largely because green is automatically “good” to Establishment types.

Back to the present day…

Anyway, this being said, when I opened up the register of interests, instead of hunting for “F” (Farage) I went to “M”: Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. Here I found A LOT. At the cheaper end of things, Miliband had his cars paid for by the United Arab Emirates during COP28 (just what you’d expect from an environmentalist). Then there were the big sums:

One was the £99,000 he received (*in value: see note at top) from the Green Finance Institute Ltd (GFI) seemingly in return for it “Providing policy support on the Labour Party's National Wealth Fund.” To add, the £99,000 is for Miliband and “another MP”, which appears to be Rachel Reeves (whose registered interests has the identical piece of text):

Second was the £233,600 Miliband received from Lisbet Rausing “to cover staffing costs for my frontbench role”:

Who? What? Where?

No one voted for the GFI or Lisbet Rausing, so news of their involvement in Labour Party politics may come as a bit of a surprise.

It turns out the National Wealth Fund Taskforce has been quite busy already, with the GFI website showing one of its meetings with Reeves and Miliband:

A nice group picture:

Below the GFI confirms its role as an adviser to the Labour Party (you know, that thing people are normally paid for rather than the opposite…)

Mark Carney is also on the Governance structure - don’t you just love a family reunion…

And it has these eight members (companies). The more the merrier, ey!

The GFI has a brief report for the Labour Party on its website, if you want to get a sense of the “advice”. Quelle surprise, it sounds exactly how you’d expect something drafted by a finance company (but a very lovely one - because it’s green, of course).

As for Lisbet Rausing…

It doesn’t take long to ascertain that she’s a loaded Swedish philanthropist and historian of science, as well as author of this wonderful article:

Who knew Beatrix Potter was an eco warrior…

Rausing has already been very generous to the Labour Party, as The Mail on Sunday revealed in February:

In December 2023 it also found that Miliband received £233,600 from Rausing “to support his role as Labour's climate change and net zero spokesman.”

I could go on researching Rausing and whether she wants to bring “back predators such as the lynx”, as hinted at by The Mail.

But the fact anyone has to search for these donors is the problem. It’s emblematic of how impossible it has become to keep up with our democracy of very generous donors, quangos and devolved governments.

Miliband and Reeves are far from the only ones to access “green money” - it took me a minute or so to find this for Labour MP Fleur Anderson (Putney):

as well as other strange things - Google inviting Olivia Bailey MP to one of its events:

It makes you wonder what else is out there.

But, hey, anyone know what Farage is having for tea?

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