(C) OpenDemocracy
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Iain Anderson: The veteran Tory and City lobbyist in Labour’s business team [1]
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Date: 2025-02
In the not so distant past, Iain Anderson was a stalwart Tory with the CV to match. In a 2012 ranking of the UK’s most powerful financial lobbyists by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Anderson came in at number five. His lobbying firm, H/Advisors Cicero, represents some of the City’s apex predators, including Blackrock, Santander and abrdn.
Over the course of a 40-year love affair with the Conservative Party, Anderson worked on two of Ken Clake’s leadership campaigns, was appointed the UK’s first-ever ‘LGBTQ+ business champion’ under Boris Johnson and later threw his considerable political weight behind Liz Truss’s Tory leadership campaign, sharing a picture of the pair on Twitter, with a gushing caption. “I’ve worked with Liz on economic reform and boosting opportunity, " he wrote. “She has fresh ideas and real energy. She does what she says and is strong and loyal. That’s why I’m backing #LizForLeader.”
In the months after the collapse of Truss’s government, the writing was on the wall: Labour was going to win the next election. Around this time, Anderson had a conversion. Now, he seems for all the world an influential player in the Starmer project.
Though he assures openDemocracy he is not a Labour member, he has donated to the party, led a major policy review, and become a regular fixture at Downing Street and official events. He has even been given a job in government.
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Anderson’s proximity to Labour has raised eyebrows among Westminster’s politicos and lobbyists alike, who ask whether his high-profile political about-face was calculated and commercially motivated. Anderson says not. This leaves open another possibility, one that is far more worrying to some in Labour, who fear their party has changed – or is in the process of changing – into one in which a pro-corporate Thatcherite such as Anderson feels most at home.
Anderson’s influence
Last year, with an election on the horizon and Labour casting around for policy ideas, the 36-page report Anderson produced for Labour, titled ‘A New Partnership’, proposed a neat solution: outsource the process to business.
In places, the report reads like a love letter to lobbying, or, as it is often colloquially referred to by those in the industry, ‘business engagement’. In its executive summary, Anderson suggested that “the least” the government could do “is treat our wealth creators with courtesy and respect”.
Reading it now, the report’s impact on Labour’s first six months in power is clear. Anderson’s paper suggested the government host “an annual Global Business Investment Summit”. The first such event was held three months after the party took office. He called for “more regular dialogue” between ministers and regulators and “more coordination from the heart of government” on business engagement. Next week, No 10 will host the second in a series of web calls with corporate lobbyists. More than 700 turned up to the first.
Presciently, another section reads: “There has been a flurry of reports in recent times about the apparent closeness between particular ministers and some businesses – bordering on cronyism at times… many feel that only those with personal political connections are able to work with the administration of the day on policy.”
Less than a year after he wrote those words, Anderson was appointed a non-executive director in the Department of Business and Trade, having worked closely with and donated to Labour throughout the intervening period.
And when Anderson’s appointment inevitably led to those same accusations of cronyism, sources briefed the press in defence of the arrangement. Anderson’s role at Cicero was “ambassadorial” an ‘ally’ told the FT, suggesting he was not involved in any lobbying, while a government aide pleaded that Anderson had been “at the forefront of transparency campaigning in the sector”.
A summer of schmoozing
On a sweltering July afternoon last year, soon after Labour had swept to power with a commanding mandate, a veritable who’s who of international capital and the corporate community were making their way through security checks and into Downing Street’s sunlit garden for an evening of canapes, drinks and schmoozing.
In an early test of the new government’s commitment to transparency and approach to business engagements, openDemocracy at the time asked for a full list of attendees. No 10 refused, instead handpicking just a few names from the guest list. By searching social media and poring over the official photographs of the event, we were able to assemble an almost complete guestlist. Present on that list, alongside a number of representatives of his company’s clients, was Anderson.
The following day, Anderson posted a selfie, outside the Treasury building on LinkedIn. It was great to be there, he wrote, “talking growth and business investment”.
A week later, as Parliament was set to rise for summer recess, Anderson was invited to another Downing Street party. This time, it was a post-election celebration for Labour activists.
In September, not long after MPs had returned from their summer break, Anderson was once again posting selfies on LinkedIn about “talking business and investment”, this time outside No 10’s famous black door on Downing Street.
Yet Anderson’s name doesn’t appear at all in the government’s official data on meetings between ministers, senior officials and external organisations. His company, H/Advisors Cicero, features just once, for an introductory meeting on 3 September with a senior civil servant in the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) “to discuss joint working between H/Advisors Cicero and DBT/HMG”.
Anderson told openDemocracy he met with the team coordinating the investment summit and No 10’s business liaison team. This may explain why the meetings were not declared, as the government only has to publish details of meetings where a minister or permanent secretary is involved. MPs, transparency campaigners and even the lobbying industry have called for this threshold to be expanded significantly to include meetings with special advisers and a wider range of officials, who wield significant power.
Even beyond Whitehall, Anderson has been a common feature at Labour events. He and eight of his employees attended the Labour Party conference in September, where his firm hosted a drinks reception. A few weeks later, he was at the International Investment Summit, which he had helped to organise. And he was there once again at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the City of London’s Guildhall for Starmer’s growth speech, where the prime minister echoed some of the points Anderson included in his review.
It is not hard to see how this proximity to the government could benefit Anderson’s firm. H/Advisors Cicero offers clients support in “developing longstanding relationships with relevant policymakers”, plus “unparalleled insights” on political trends and policy.
In early December, less than a fortnight before his DBT role was announced, Anderson hosted a meeting at his firm’s offices involving a number of key financial services clients and Labour rising star Callum Anderson MP (no relation) – who also happens to be a former City lobbyist.
It is unclear whether H/Advisors Cicero’s Anderson was wearing a Labour Party hat or that of a City lobbyist at the December meeting, but such events seem to blur the lines between the two roles and raise plenty of questions around conflicts of interest.
openDemocracy approached the government for clarity on Anderson’s role as a non-executive director at the Department of Business and Trade, asking whether there are arrangements in place to minimise potential conflicts of interest and whether Anderson had committed to stop lobbying the government he is simultaneously employed by.
A DBT spokesperson said the department does not comment on individual cases, but pointed to the Code of Conduct for Board Members of Public Bodies, which states: “You must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between your public duties and your private interests, financial or otherwise”.
A DBT spokesperson said: “Non-executive directors provide independent advice, support and scrutiny on the crucial work of the Department.
“They are required to register their interests and must abide by the Code of Conduct for Board Members of Public Bodies. This appointment followed a fair and open competition, and the department has robust processes to ensure that any outside interests are managed appropriately.”
‘Clear conflict of interest’
Though government sources are keen to paint Anderson’s proximity to Labour as unremarkable, plenty of people in Westminster see it as pretty extraordinary. It has been a regular topic for gossip among lobbyists and the many parliamentary staffers with a background in public affairs. openDemocracy understands that a popular theory is that Anderson is hoping to earn himself a place in the Lords.
Anderson dismissed the “gossip” about his proximity to Labour. He told openDemocracy: “My support for Labour at the general election was – as I said at the time – about the performance of the previous government and also the culture wars. I was a Conservative member for almost four decades but very openly and with some anguish left the party in 2023.”
Gossip aside, Anderson’s role in the party is also prompting concerns. A significant number of lobbyists argue that theirs is a legitimate industry being undermined by such arrangements, while many in Labour struggle to understand how their party has become a home for someone of Anderson’s ilk. There is a view, even among some Labour MPs who are broadly on board with the Starmer project, that the party risks appearing to the public as no different than the Conservatives, making it even more vulnerable to Reform on the anti-establishment front.
One Labour MP, who spoke to openDemocracy on condition of anonymity, said: “The British state has been corrupted by big money. It would appear that whoever is in Downing Street, bankers and business leaders call the shots. The Tories lost the trust of the British public in no small part due to their dodgy dealings. If the Labour government isn’t careful it will go the same way.”
Pressed on Anderson’s role in government specifically, the MP was unequivocal: “It is a clear conflict of interest for a lobbyist to work in the government.”
Anderson told openDemocracy: “I do not and have not lobbied on issues relating to DBT as a member of the Board.”
He added that he believes his close working relationship with Labour doesn’t provide any commercial advantage to either his firm, or its clients.
“Over my entire career I have led and built a business which has been one of the most transparent companies declaring all our clients and staff at all times. I would say ethical and good governance in public affairs is about a strong argument – not contacts. I have always believed that and that has been my maxim building my business,” he said.
‘Do what he says’
It was a mark of Anderson’s political pedigree and influence that when he decided to shift his support from Conservative to Labour ahead of the last election, both The Financial Times and the UK’s paper of record, The Times, gave over pages of newsprint to cover it.
“Anderson, who says he will support Labour at the next election, recently met Sir Keir Starmer to discuss business policy and said he was confident the opposition party leader would ‘do what he says,’” the FT’s write-up read, with a note of ambiguity.
One reading is that Anderson simply believed Starmer to be a man of his word. Another is that the lifelong Tory and champion of big business felt the Labour leader could be relied upon to heed his advice.
Last week, two years to the day since Anderson’s great conversion was made public, the business secretary (and Anderson’s new boss) Jonathan Reynolds addressed business leaders at Samsung HQ. He hit all the now-familiar notes; Labour will prioritise regulatory reform and introduce policies “made with business, for business”.
Anderson, who was in the audience, may well have reflected that Starmer and his government are indeed doing exactly as he said.
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