In December 2023, Lord Mandelson made the extraordinary confession that in 1996 then-Labour leader Tony Blair accepted a £1 million donation from Brian Davies, founder of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, in order to end fox hunting. “I’ve known for many years that Labour’s Hunting Act 2004 was bought and paid for by a political donation”, admitted Brian Basham, who was running Labour fundraising at the time.
Labour is no stranger to ‘cash for influence’ scandals. Lord Mandelson’s article may have served as a reminder of the 2009 scandal, in which Labour life peers were accused of offering to help make amendments to legislation for up to £120,000.
And now, almost thirty years after Blair’s underhanded deal with the anti-hunt lobby, we find ourselves once again in a situation where Labour policy makers are in thrall to powerful anti-hunt crusaders.
Dale Vince: Eco-zealot
Perhaps the most egregious case of anti-hunt "eco-zealots" buying favour with Labour is Dale Vince, founder of ‘green’ energy company Ecotricity and one of the party’s biggest donors.
Electoral Commission records show that through Ecotricity, Vince has given Labour over £5.75 million since 2019, including £20,000 to Sir Keir Starmer and £10,000 to Angela Rayner. Over £1 million was given to Labour’s campaign in the days after the 2024 election was called.
The other passion projects and causes which Vince props up include eco-activist groups Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and Animal Rising – the last of which made a big show of disrupting the 2023 Grand National with the help of sabs Bernadette Green and Ricky Frazer Southall.
It will be no surprise then to learn Vince is on very friendly terms with the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS), which he describes as doing “an amazing job” and as being “a privilege to work with”.
The megadonor also seeks to lecture the public on issues such as red meat consumption, which he says is “destructive” and should be levied with a red meat tax – something that would be devastating for British farmers should it come into force.
The millionaire ecowarrior may not be as environmentally friendly as he claims, however. Vince’s supposedly ‘eco’ company has been accused of ‘greenwashing’ by political transparency watchdog OpenDemocracy. According to its UK investigations editor Martin Williams, Ecotricity claims to be “Britain’s greenest energy suppler”, yet researchers found in July 2024 that "99% of the gas it supplies comes from fossil fuels".
Dale Vince and his foxy friend, the LACS mascot
Labour and the League
Dale Vince isn’t the only way LACS is linked to the Labour Party. Behind The Masks has previouslyreported on the internal turmoil at the League, which involves allegations of fraud and political interference, as well as a police investigation.
In July, LACS chief executive Andy Knott claimed Labour was “interfering in the strategy and operations of the charity”. According to Knott, Labour promised to close “all loopholes” in hunting laws but the party’s manifesto promises only to ban trail hunting – something he described as a “betrayal”.
Implicated was Dan Norris, Labour MP for Northeast Somerset and Hanham and chairman of LACS. Aligned with the League, Norris has made his views on legal trail hunting abundantly clear, describing it as “a smokescreen used by bloodthirsty individuals”.
Prior to the July 2024 election, Knott alleged that Norris told him Labour would implement a full ban on hunting if elected, but refused to include it in the election manifesto in case it “would be seen as part of a class war and viewed unfavourably by rural voters”.
If true, this was a plan to deliberately and grossly mislead the British electorate by Labour, working in cahoots with a supposedly politically impartial charity.
And it wouldn’t be the first time the League was embroiled in political controversy. In 2010 the Charity Commission censured LACS for describing the Tories as the "nasty party." The commission said the League's claim, published in a press release, contravened charity rules on party political neutrality.
Rabble Rausing heiress
Dale Vince isn’t the only Labour megadonor whose ideology threatens the fabric of the British countryside. Tetra Pak heiress Lisbet Rausing has donated over £1 million to the party since 2019. Her largest donations include £155,000 to now Environment Secretary Steve Reed and £233,000 to Energy Security Minister Ed Miliband back in 2023.
Such large donations from private donors to shadow cabinet members have already been flagged as potentially problematic by political transparency and anti-corruption campaigners.
Sue Hawley, director of Spotlight on Corruption, told Politico that Labour needed to be “very careful” that donations and freebies did not offer unequal access for consultancies and private donors “looking to get a foot in the door with a potential new government.” She added, “If it is serious about restoring trust in the integrity of government it’s imperative they develop processes for levelling the field in terms of access … to ensure there can be no perception their policies are being or could be captured by private interests.”
One such policy that may be being captured by private interests is of course Labour’s pledge to ban the practice of trail hunting. Rausing has not yet commented publicly on the matter of trail hunting. She is, however, on the Board of Trustees of the National Trust which has banned legal trail hunting on its land.
Reed, however, has been vocal in his aim to “eliminate” fox hunting, which he described in an X post as “barbaric” - just one month after receiving Rausing’s enormous donation. As Shadow Environment Secretary, he promised in February that Labour would close “loopholes” in the existing ban, just three months after Rausing agreed to pay for Reed’s staffing costs.
Lisbet Rausing
Although her views on trail hunting are unknown, Rausing is a keen proponent of the controversial process of rewilding, something she practices on her huge Corrour Estate in Scotland. There, she has joined the ranks of extremely wealthy (and largely international) individuals, known collectively as the ‘green lairds’, buying up huge swathes of land in the country to experiment on.
This practice has been much criticised as a “greenwashed land-grab”, particularly as it is estimated that more than half of Scotland is owned by fewer than 500 individuals. According to ecologist and science journalist Alex Morss, “It is not democratic or always particularly wise when restoration ‘rewilding’ is led by unqualified, rich hobbyists.”
Rausing also uses her powerful charity, Arcadia, to impose rewilding in the UK and throughout Europe. In 2022 Arcadia gave nearly £4 million to Rewilding Europe, and her Ecological Restoration Fund announced a £9 million financial partnership with Rewilding Europe in 2023 “to support rewilding across Europe”.
Her donation to Reed has already prompted concern from the farming community regarding the influence Rausing’s rewilding beliefs may have on the new Environment Secretary. Reed is also under pressure from farmers for failing to confirm whether £358 million in unspent DEFRA funding will be spent on agriculture or reallocated to other departments. It would seem the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is more concerned with policing trail hunts to check if the nation is actually growing enough food.
Ruth Jones and LAWS
The Labour MP for Newport West and Islwyn Ruth Jones has long denied the legality of trail hunting, having frequently repeated the mantra that it is a “smokescreen” in parliamentary debates on the matter. In July Jones expressed her disappointment that a “tightening up of the rules around trail hunting” was not featured in the King’s Speech.
Is Jones’ desire to criminalise trail hunting in any way linked to the fact that she receives donations from the Labour Animal Welfare Society (LAWS) - an unashamedly anti-hunting group? Since January, LAWS has provided the Labour MP with £18,000 to pay for a staff member to specifically work on animal welfare policy. Presumably the staff member was employed to assist in Jones’ role as Shadow Minister for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs.
LAWS claims on its website that it is able to “move the animal agenda further because [they] understand…how the political system works.” LAWS celebrates banning hunting with dogs as one of the key measures achieved by the last Labour government. The Society also publicises “working closely with Labour MPs, many of whom are members of LAWS.”
That an unelected body should have such apparent influence over the future of the countryside is abominable. But LAWS doesn’t mind sailing close to the wind. Its president, Baroness Hayman of Ullock – previously Labour MP for Workington and now Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at DEFRA – was appointed a member of the senior advisory board for slick lobbying firm Grayling in October 2023.
Grayling has helped many dubious clients escape scrutiny and influence government policy over the years. Recently, the PR firm represented Japanese technology company Fujitsu as it attempted to navigate through the Post Office scandal. For those in need of a reminder, that was the 15-years-long saga in which Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon accounting software resulted in over 900 sub-postmasters being wrongfully prosecuted for theft before a landmark act of Parliament overturned their convictions.
It seems Baroness Hayman’s expertise in lobbying is not only reserved for locking up innocent posties but has also proved very effective in moving a ban on trail hunting ever higher on the Labour government’s agenda.
Labour’s rural rampage
Concerns during the election campaign that a Labour win would wreak havoc in the countryside are fast becoming a reality. In June, Tim Bonner, the head of the Countryside Alliance warned that the party would carry out a “devastating” assault on rural life. In particular, he cautioned that further attempts to restrict trail hunting would “have a devastating impact on people’s lives”.
“Countryside people have been hunting for generations and they want the ability to do that in one way or another. The countryside will be a much worse place without the sight and sound of hounds,” Bonner told The Telegraph.
Now, with the support of a "green energy" mogul, a pampered packaging princess, and a postie punishing lobbyist, that devastation feels closer than ever.