TRASHFUTURE - *PREVIEW* Mr. Lobby feat. Ethan Shone

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

For this week’s bonus, it’s Riley, Milo, Hussein, and November speaking with journalist Ethan Shone (@ejshone93), author of The Dark Arts newsletter, about the sheer volume of lobbyists in Parliament and their influence on UK politics. Safe to guess that it’s completely benign, and actually good? Check out Ethan’s work at OpenDemocracy here: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/author/ethan-shone/ Check out The Dark Arts here: https://thedarkarts.substack.com/ Get the full episode on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/mr-lobby-feat-108854355 KJB LIVE ALERT Kill James Bond are doing three nights at Conway Hall in Central London on 9th, 10th, and 11th August, and there’s also livestream tickets available if you can’t make it! Details are available here: https://www.killjamesbond.com/live MILO ALERT  Milo’s special ‘Voicemail’ is premiering on YouTube on July 10th - check it out here: https://youtu.be/x4oTP3M6ppo Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and November (@postoctobrist)

Let's look at who a number of prime ministers has appointed as their business advisor, like the Downing Street business liaison, the main channel for a lot of above the board lobbying to the prime minister. Rishi Sunak appointed a banker. Truss picked someone from the energy industry. Boris Johnson in classic form appointed a think tanker. Theresa May picked a very old investment banker. And then Starmer hired a guy from a company called Hackley-Hoot, Varun Chandra. Ethan, can you tell us a little about Hacklyoot? Yeah. So there are two versions of this. So there's the thing that's actually true and

real and has happened, which is that they were formed out of, formed by former MI6 operatives. Former. Big, big quotes around former. Yeah, we should really emphasize that. They're very keen to emphasize that. And for a number of years operated in the shadows, so to speak. So they were doing what they would turn kind of, I don't know, strategic consultancy. One of those things that doesn't really kind of mean anything. You have merely adopted consultancy. We have always been there.

So that's what, that's what they did for quite a while. I mean, like their website famously for most of the time that they've been in operation was just a business card, which either suggests that they were doing something really dodgy or they were just kind of their IT guy was, was my dad. Who that's not the extent of his kind of web development skills, I would think. You turn up the volume and say, is that Huey Lewis? They had a lint tree, you know? Like a tablet user. Yeah.

Let's carry on, please. So yeah, in the last few years, they, I think, to kind of borrow their terminology, they try to kind of demystify what they do. And if you ask them about what they do now, they kind of describe it as like, it's nothing like working in intelligence, right? Because what they have is a model where essentially they have lots and lots of advisors spread across different industries and sectors who on a kind of formal or not so formal basis provide them information. So one way of looking at that is that they have a network of operatives who

provide intelligence but they're no longer obviously anything to do with them with the intelligence services. That's something that they and also Open Democracy's lawyers would like me to very much stress. Of course. Yeah, of course. So, but again, in terms of what they actually do, so I, they kind of came onto my radar because- Oh, they got him. Where's, oh god, they got Ethan? Oh no. They unplugged him.

Yeah, he's been, something's happened. Funny, funniest possible moment for that to happen. Ethan, are you, oh they got you. That's typical of the British intelligence services, you know, they fouled it up again, the Russians would have just thrown you out of a window. for that to happen. Ethan, are you... Oh, they got you! That's typical of the British intelligence services, you know, they fouled it up again, the Russians would have just thrown you out of a window. Very sad, I don't know why he jumped. He was making good point on podcast.

Ah, fucking... In Britain, you know, there's even a waiting list to get assassinated in this country. Well, Hacloit, which I'm now reliably informed is pronounced, uh, they may have gotten Ethan, but he's back now. They couldn't make it stick. So what you were talking about though was how they have sought to demystify their image, they have no relationship with the spooky world. Give us that. If you have to say it, if you really had the, you know, my, I have no connection to the

spooky world t-shirt is raising a lot of questions, which are answered by. I hate Halloween. I won't even have pumpkins in my house. I'm protesting outside a haunted house like Christians outside an abortion clinic. That's right. But but they they so they say, no, we're not a lobbying organization. We don't advise political parties. But as you said, what they do is they work in essentially

strategic corporate advisory through intelligence. Yeah. Right. That's it. And you know, this is what even if we accept we accept, which we do, by the way, very crucially, which we do, that they are all, that no one has any current connections to the intelligence world, that at least people who may have had or have suspected to have intelligence connections beyond just the world of lobbyists in the kind of Starmor inner circle. It's astonishing.

It's a weird sort of nexus, right? Like, and it's something that you don't, for I think obvious reasons, see much remarked upon. It's sort of like the inverse of the, well, it's sort of like the mirror of the ICJ thing, right? And that these are, you know, services institutions that are made of people who it's already like a, necessarily a grand conspiracy so much as they find themselves relating to and agreeing with Stammer and the things that he wants to do. But fuck me is it ever. Sinister is the thing, right? Can you imagine being like a Labour Party, like, constituency Labour Party, like, volunteer or whatever, and in a process you have no say over a guy you have never met before is like parachuted

into your constituency, sort of almost literally, and you go like, oh cool, why do you want to be MP for here? He's like, never been here before, spent most of my time in like Maur oh cool, why do you want to be MP for here? And he's like, never been here before. Spent most of my time in Mauritania. Don't ask about it. By the way, I am absolutely thrilled to come back here once a month and have to talk to people about stuff that, you know, like their immigration or their benefits instead of my real passion, which is waterboarding people. I mean, look, sometimes your chief of staff just really wants a multi-million pound renovation

of a stadium in Northern Ireland to go ahead. And for her son to be an MP in a safe scene. Maybe they could be bringing that kind of moxie to resolving a border dispute in their constituency by waterboarding one of the people. My MP has started arming and training moderate rebels in the constituency with an eye to destabilizing the borough council. Jabal planning reform. The thing is, I was gonna do a bit about, like, MI6 guy who got, like, too into the

politics side of it, but that's just Rory Stewart. We already have one of those. Yeah. Yeah, and he's also a podcaster now. Yeah, what about the rest is intelligence and everyone's just silory Stewart. We already have one of those. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. And he's also a podcaster now. Yeah. What about the rest is intelligence and everyone is just a silhouette stalking on a podcast. So, but, but that's, that's like, that is like one headline appointment, right?

Which is, you know, Hucklite right in there. If we think like all of these business liaisons are emblematic of how like these people think of politics and wanted to govern, I can really think of no one better than someone from Hukloit Verstammer, which is because he's business intelligent, not because of an intelligence connection. Yeah, no, I mean, they kind of like came onto my radar, first of all, because they had paid for Peter Kyle, who is like the kind of science and innovation minister, to kind of, they paid for his jolly around like Silicon Valley meeting, Google and OpenAI

and these kinds of firms. And so when I got in touch with like a spokesperson for, they were quite kind of cagey about it. Obviously that was cagey, not KGB about it, but they were kind of, eventually it came out that they'd actually organized like a kind of a dinner, like a secret kind of private dinner, which they term it in really quite kind of, almost like it's kind of a book club. They say that they, you know, they bring together interesting people from the worlds of academia

and sport and culture and just to have interesting conversations. And there's really nothing more to it than that. Don't, don't kind of... Okay, cool. The big owl statue is decorative. Yeah, it's definitely not the stone cutters from The Simpsons. There's nothing like that. Get that image out of your mind.

But then it's actually, but so you kind of push back on that and kind of, and it's like, well, your clients are presumably there, right? Cause this is what you, what you actually do is, as a profit seeking enterprise, you actually do something. It's not just vibes. Like, and that which is kind of, in a way, symptomatic of how a lot of lobbying organizations and consultants talk about their work to journalists and to people who dare to ask about it is like they kind of just ignore the obvious fact that they are doing this for a reason. They want influence, they want insight, and they want to give it to their clients. And Hacloyte's clients, as far as we know,

are, I mean, they like to say that they represent or they advise kind of 15 of the top 20 private equity firms in the world and most of the leading companies in every major sector. So like, they are obviously doing these things for a reason. And that's why they came onto my radar and they've since kind of courted like Darren Jones. And he's been to a few kind of secret seminars at their London offices, which again is totally above board and fine.

And no one should feel any kind of concern or anxiety about that. One of the things which is gonna sort of come out, especially as we talk more about this, is exactly how cagey and secretive all of this activity is. It is something that when you ask MPs about it, you'll get blanket denials. Generally, if you ask, for example, hey, faculty AI, that company that co-wrote the AI in government with Tony Blair Institute. Hey, how come you just like seconded someone to Peter Kyle, same guy, probably as you've noted, Ethan, one of the most lobbyable briefs in government, given that like we've decided we want to like

really invest in our technology sector, right? How come you just gave him employees to work as his researchers for like six months? Why do you do that? Because parliamentary researchers are like indentured servants. Yeah, they're tied to the land. My parliamentary serfs. I shall love all that my lord loves and shun all that he shuns. But he is like, this is again, really common. Banks do this. Technology companies do this. Like, oh, hey, party in opposition.

Do you do you not have like, are you not able to like pay your staff? We'll just give you some people and don't worry about it. We're not we don't want anything.