Out of the shadows, the powerful fixer behind her downfall
AS THE great and good of the Tory Party gather next month for one of the most important lunches in their parliamentary calendar, the familiar silver-haired figure of Lord Polak will be masterminding proceedings.
The 700-strong guest list for the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) lunch at the Park Plaza Hotel in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament includes Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
In a testament to smooth-talking Polak’s networking skills, Theresa May was guest speaker last year, while the previous year David Cameron gave the main address.
Next month’s speaker has not yet been announced but it had been widely thought to be Priti Patel – until this week when the controversy over the international development secretary’s trip to Israel in August blew up.
Polak, 56, is the fixer who set up several of Patel’s meetings with senior political figures in Israel, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
He sat in on 11 of the meetings on Patel’s so-called family holiday. He was also with her in the two further undisclosed meetings in New York and Parliament with government officials which are thought to have finally sealed her fate.
One of the figures she was introduced to by Polak is Yair Lapid, the leader of the Opposition who is widely expected to become Israel’s next prime minister. Lapid was at a party Polak threw in Parliament to celebrate being made a peer in the autumn of 2015.
For almost 30 years, Polak has nurtured the Conservative Friends of Israel and developed the organisation, where he is honorary president, into one of the most powerful and influential lobbying groups in the history of the Tory Party. It has tentacles in every corner – it’s believed that as many as 80 per cent of Tory MPs are members – but he has done it by operating behind the scenes. He eschews publicity, rarely gives interviews, and until now has always been regarded as a shrewd political operator.
That is why friends and colleagues are so baffled that the peer – who has contacts at the highest level in the Israeli government – misjudged the Patel trip so badly. He should have known that if Patel attended high-powered meetings with Israeli ministers in the absence of civil servants to take minutes it could threaten her career.
And he understands only too well that the spotlight will now be shone not just on his beloved CFI, but also on the extraordinary influence he and his organisation have within the Tories. Many believe the controversy – and its seismic repercussions – could mark the beginning of the end of that influence.
ONE minister told me last night: ‘He’s gone too far. Lord Polak should be expelled from the Conservative Party. He knew perfectly well he was peddling influence on behalf of Israel and it was improper to involved Priti Patel in his scheme. He took advantage of the fact she isn’t anything like as clever as she thinks she is.’
The day before the Patel crisis was made public at the end of last week, it was clear something was up. Polak was spotted deep in conversation in Portcullis House in Parliament with Gavin Barwell, May’s increasingly influential chief of staff. In addition to his work with the CFI, Polak is chairman of the advisory board of a consultancy called The Westminster Connection, which has lobbied MPs successfully on behalf of Elbit Systems, Israel’s major defence contractor.
In 2012, Elbit’s British chairman, retired Lt Gen Richard Applegate, boasted to undercover reporters who secretly taped him of the consultancy’s role in lobbying MPs. He claimed the consultancy could gain access ‘from the Prime Minister down’ – the PM being David Cameron at the time.
Applegate was quoted saying: ‘We piggy-back on something, and please don’t spread this around, to do with basically Conservative Friends of Israel... and you then do a series of discreet engagements using advisers to gain access to particular decision makers.’
One of the Tory MPs they lobbied was James Arbuthnot, who was then chairman of both the Commons defence select committee and the CFI parliamentary group.
State-educated Stuart Polak comes from a working-class background. He was born and brought up in Liverpool and was a child cantor, leading the singing at the Childwall Hebrew Congregation. From the age of 15 he began visiting Israel on educational visits.
He married Charlotte in Liverpool in 1986 and she is now company secretary of one of his companies. They have two grown-up children, Natasha and Daniel, and live in a £1.2 million house in Hertfordshire.
After moving to London he began his career as a United Synagogue youth officer in Edgware, north London. A skilled schmoozer even then, as an officer in the 1980s at the Board of Deputies – the main representative body of British Jews – he encouraged the then Education Secretary Sir Keith Joseph to help Jewish students on university campuses.
It was in 1989, aged 28, that he took up a job at CFI, saying: ‘I was brought up to put as much as possible back into the community. I’m as ambitious as the next man, but I’m motivated more by a sense of duty.’
And when the Tories returned to power in 2010 after 13 years in the political wilderness, he really came into his own. He has taken more than 70 Tory MPs on fact-finding trips to Israel since then.
THREE members of the Cabinet – Mrs Rudd, communities secretary Sajid Javid and international development secretary Liam Fox – have been guests of Polak in Israel, although they were backbenchers at the time.
Those who are sceptical about the country when they visit on his trips invariably return, if not indoctrinated, at least with a pro-Israel view.
In February this year, CFI organised a delegation to Israel headed by former Tory Party and CFI chairman Eric Pickles to celebrate his knighthood. Pickles was accompanied by former education secretary Nicky Morgan, former work and pensions secretary Stephen Crabb, former Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers – and Polak himself.
CFI was formed in 1974 and has since made deep inroads into the party. Polak himself is thought to have raised about £10 million for Tory funds.
As for Priti Patel, Polak has long been a fan because of her staunch support for Israel. But he appears to have over-reached himself. ‘Stuart may have got too cocky for his own good,’ one source said. ‘He’s helped Priti’s rise – and her fall.’