Labour’s hypocrisy on donations

LABOUR was accused of ‘rank hypocrisy’ last night for calling on the Tories to return nearly £2million of Russian-linked donations – but refusing to say if they would do likewise.

Sir Keir Starmer’s party was challenged to say why it was not returning part of more than £1million received from a hedge fund tycoon who had business connections with Russia.

The row broke out after Labour seized on the Ukraine crisis to urge the Conservative Party to hand back money from any donor who had made money from Russia or had alleged links to the Putin regime.

Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor, claimed that such donors had given the Tories £1.93 million since Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019.

But now Labour is facing its own questions over a series of donations made since 2012 by financier Martin Taylor – including £95,000 to Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign in 2020.

Mr Taylor, who started donating to Labour under Ed Miliband’s leadership, helped run the Nevsky Fund, which had major investments in Russia.

The fund, which operated until 2015, reportedly held stocks in Russia’s energy corporation Gazprom, oil producer Lukoil and state-owned bank Sberbank.

Labour declined to say yesterday whether it would return any of Mr Taylor’s money.

But Tory MP Alec Shelbrooke said: ‘It is rank hypocrisy of Labour to call for the Tories to return donations from people who made money from Russian connections but then not say if they will do the same themselves.

‘Once again, while chasing quick political headlines, Labour have no idea where much of their own money or funding comes from.’

Mr Taylor could not be reached for comment. But last year, a spokesman for the financier said that the Nevsky Fund had ‘passively invested in small minority stakes in publicly listed companies all over the world, including in Russia’.

The fund ‘took no active role whatsoever in the management of any Russian companies or had commercial business dealings with any Russian companies’ and that ‘none of the investors in the Nevsky Fund were Russian’, the spokesman added.