Councillor John Slinger was selected late last week as the Labour candidate for Rugby, a key marginal seat. Slinger is known to most only as a “councillor who has lived in the town for 17 years” – few will know he’s been working for a shadowy PR firm which counts Saudi Arabia and Hong Kong as its clients. The bad guys…

Slinger was senior director and events manager for the low-profile advisory firm Consulum and is currently a partner there. Consulum was launched by former executives from scandal-ridden Bell Pottinger as a discrete firm for governments. It’s worked for years on communications programmes with the Saudis and even briefly worked up plans to improve the image of Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar. Consulum took a $6.3 million contract, rejected by at least eight other PR firms, to “Relaunch Hong Kong” and improve its global reputation at the exact same time as it launched the National Security Law to curtail freedoms and extend Chinese control. Guido seems to remember Labour taking shots at Cameron for having worked with”Chinese interests”…

Before that Slinger worked as a consultant for Tony Blair Associates. His LinkedIn boasts of his “excellent understanding of the workings of Westminster, Whitehall and international relations (particularly the Middle East)“, with experience working “in Abu Dhabi and working in Iraq and the Arabian Gulf“. An ideal candidate for leafy Rugby…