It has emerged that a key funder to Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham also serves on the board of the United Arab Emirates All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG).
Labour peer and former Home Secretary David Blunkett was a central donor to Andy Burnham’s by-election campaign. On the same day as Burnham’s victory in Makerfield, upon which he automatically vacated his previous post as mayor of Greater Manchester, he also registered £27,000 in “mayoral campaigning donations”. Again, this included thousands from Blunkett.
But Blunkett was simultaneously serving as vice-chair of the United Arab Emirates APPG.
In 2023, Blunkett, a long-standing supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, proclaimed that MPs calling for a ceasefire in Gaza were engaging in “gesture politics” and should “grow up”, and that Keir Starmer was right to reject such calls.
After Burnham served as his private parliamentary secretary, Blunkett says that the two “became close”. Both were key supporters of Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq, and Burnham consistently voted against an inquiry into the Iraq invasion.
Former LFI chair Steve McCabe also served on the board of the UAE parliamentary group. In February 2023, he registered a £6051 donation from the Emirati Foreign Ministry. That same month, he led the “largest LFI delegation in a decade”, delivering a personal gift from Keir Starmer to Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
From 2019-24, McCabe received over £10,000 worth of donations from LFI. At the lobby group’s 2021 annual lunch, he declared that he was working with Keir Starmer to make Labour a “home for friends of Israel.”
Ex-Conservative minister Leo Docherty was another vice-chair of the UAE parliamentary group. In 2024, Docherty said that he was “immensely proud of the F-35 project” and described the Israeli state as “an extremely important ally”. He now works for surveillance firm Palantir.
In May 2023, then Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood praised the UAE for “discreetly shaping” events in the region. From 2021-23, he received donations of over £19,000 from the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2017, Ellwood described himself as a “longstanding friend of Israel”.
Days before the Manchester City verdict, chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak met with Burnham’s Trade Minister Jonathan Reynolds. In 2018, Reynolds was hosted by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He had previously worked as an assistant to James Purnell, another former LFI chair and now Burnham’s chief of staff.
Connections to Abu Dhabi are raising serious questions for the Labour Prime Minister. In the end, it was the Mandelson-McSweeney corruption scandal that brought down the Starmer administration. But now, can Burnham survive the Emirati debacle?