Deborah Mattinson has been appointed as Keir Starmer’s Director of Strategy, starting in July. She says she’s “looking forward to playing a part in helping Labour reconnect with the voters it has lost”. She performed a similar role for Gordon Brown, it didn’t go well, and she eventually quit working for him.

One of the issues was her firm’s Citizen Engagement work for the Brown government at the same time as she did pro bono work for Brown’s political project. Guido felt that the millions she was billing the taxpayers could be cross-subsidising her work for Gordon. In her book (“Talking to a Brick Wall“) about her work for Gordon Brown, she wrote that our stories about the conflict of interests enraged Brown. She stopped working for him as a result.

So it is with amusement that Guido reports that her firm Britain Thinks has, since 2020, been awarded 23 government contracts worth millions to her firm. Britain Thinks has been awarded 3 contracts worth £2.99 million by the Cabinet Office alone in the last year. Despite stepping down as a director, she remains a substantial shareholder in Britain Thinks. Guido is not suggesting a conflict of interest beyond querying whether she really, at heart, wants to make the government more successful. Isn’t it remarkably generous of a Tory government to enrich the Labour Party’s Director of Strategy…