A Wee Sniff Around those That Destroyed Corbyn and Why

The British-American Project (BAP) was set up in the 1980’s amid CIA concern about ‘anti-American’ drift in the Labour Party.

It describes itself as “a transatlantic fellowship of over 1,200 leaders, rising stars and opinion formers from a broad spectrum of occupations, backgrounds and political views.” It cultivates pro-American political positions among the British left. Work to create the BAP began in the early 1980s when Labour was headed by Michael Foot, the first non-Atlanticist Labour leader to emerge since World War Two. The BAP’s aim was to push British progressives into a pro-American political position at a time when the CIA was worried about the strength of the Labour left and its ‘anti-American’ views.

Labour MP Rushanara Ali sits on the project’s advisory board alongside former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers. Many senior UK military officers have been members with two joining this year without the knowledge of Ministry of Defence. Project funders include BAE Systems and BP. Three senior Labour politicians recently joined a secretive lobby group set up in coordination with the US embassy in London to further cultivate the British left.

Labour leader Keir Starmer and Labour shadow minister Alison McGovern joined the project in Sep 2022. She is the former chair of the Blairite campaign group Progress (now Progressive Britain) and quit her role in shadow chancellor’s John McDonnell’s team in 2016. She went on to become a vocal critic of Corbyn’s leadership. She is close to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, serving as his shadow minister for sport and culture before her current role. She attended a fully funded (the project paid £1,776 for her presence) at the annua conference in Minnesota in 2022.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar (middle) with journalist Ayesha Hazarika and comedian Matt Forde at the 2021 BAP conference in Glasgow, which Sarwar organised.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, joined the group in 2018 and organised its annual conference in Glasgow in 2021. He spoke of his “unparalleled enthusiasm” for the event and referred to the BAP as his “special family”. His register of interests included £2,000 in costs paid by the BAP for a four-day trip to attend its annual conference in Seattle in 2018. Sarwar says the trip was “to develop and grow professional transatlantic relationships with a focus on technology and the rise of prejudice and hate.” He described the BAP as a “not for profit leadership network” adding: “I do not consider that this visit meets the prejudice test or the political activities test.” In June, he praised Tony Blair and called on Jeremy Corbyn to apologise for the “antisemitism crisis” that rocked Labour under his leadership.

James McMahon, Labour’s shadow minister for the environment, declared he was a member of the BAP in 2015, listing it under organisations whose “principal purposes includes the influence of public opinion”. He served as leader of Oldham council from 2011-2016. In his declaration to the council, he wrote that the BAP had paid for him to attend its conference in Philadelphia in 2010 at which time he was a 30-year-old Labour councillor. Soon after becoming MP for Oldham in 2015, he hosted BAP personnel in a discussion in his constituency. He is also a member of Progress and supported Owen Smith, Corbyn’s challenger from the right, after the failed coup against the latter’s leadership in 2016.

Rushanara Ali, Labour MP for Benthal Green and Bow, joined the BAP in 2004 as a 29-year-old Home Office staffer working on community cohesion. She now sits on the project’s 13-strong advisory board, alongside the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers. In 2016, Ali backed the coup against Corbyn’s leadership, saying he should “do the decent thing” and quit as Labour leader. In the resulting leadership election, she also campaigned for Owen Smith. The following year,” UpRising Leadership” a mentoring charity which helps “leaders better reflect and represent the communities they serve”—paid £595 for Ali to attend the BAP conference in Manchester.

Joanne Anderson, Labour’s Mayor of Liverpool, joined the project this year where the 2023 BAP conference titled “You’ll Never Walk Alone” will be held. Anderson became Labour’s candidate for Liverpool Mayor in controversial circumstances in 2021. Then led by Starmer, the party scrapped a shortlist of three candidates selected by the local party with no explanation and imposed two local councillors, including Anderson. The original, locally selected shortlist included socialist candidate and the city’s Lord Mayor Anna Rothery, who was backed by leading figures on Labour’s left, including Corbyn.

Another figure involved in the project is Claire Kober the former Labour leader of Haringey Council who was paid £2,000 by the project to attend its November 2016 conference in Houston, Texas. Just over a year later, Kober quit her position on the council citing “bullying” and “sexism” from followers of Corbyn, who opposed the £2bn joint venture deal her council had struck with private developer Lendlease for a controversial housing project.

British-Nigerian poet Ben Okri, a celebrated figure in post-colonial literature, joined the project in 2014. He wrote that British children, “should be taught about the empire and colonialism but they must also learn about the legitimate voices against its cruelties and how people fought for their independence.” Oddly he sits on the project’s advisory board alongside Sir John Sawers, head of MI6 from 2009-14, who was a foreign policy adviser to Tony Blair at the time of the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Blair appointed Sawers Britain’s a special representative to Iraq in May 2003, two months after the US-UK invasion. He is now a director of BP, which returned to Iraq in 2009 after a 35-year absence. He made £699,000 in his first four and half years on the UK oil giant’s board, which he joined a year after stepping down from MI6.

Ruth Smeeth, an honorary captain in the UK military, is now CEO of Index on Censorship, Britain’s most important free expression group. She was appointed by Trevor Phillips, chair of Index’s board, who was close to Tony Blair and has been a prominent figure within the project for decades. In June 2015,

Phillips spoke at a BAP event at which Peter Mandelson also spoke. She was an outspoken critic of Corbyn’s leadership of Labour, particularly around his alleged toleration of antisemitism in the party. A US diplomatic cable, published by WikiLeaks in 2010, named her as a “strictly protect” informant for the US embassy in London.

From 2016-21, Index received £603,257 from the National Endowment Democracy (NED), a “democracy promotion” organisation established in 1983, two years before the project, and funded by the US Congress. According to the New York Times, the NED was established “to do in the open what the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] has done surreptitiously for decades”. Ruth Smeeth’s husband Michael Smeeth, is the UK chair on the project’s executive committee and one of its three directors.

Tony Blair won the 1997 election and appointed no less than five BAP members to ministerial posts in his first cabinet. He later said the BAP had direct access to his ministers and arranged meetings for them. “The British/American project aims to strengthen the vital and long-standing relationship between the US and UK,” he told parliament, adding “as part of that process, it arranges meetings, including with [UK government] Ministers, for young leaders from…the two countries.”

Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, was a BAP member while in government and commented in 2007: “The lasting relationships that are built up [in BAP] are the only way to underpin an enduring Special Relationship. Takes the working out of networking.” Powell is now part of a conflict mediation group, Inter Mediate, which he wrote in a private email “works closely” with MI6.

Another member of the BAP, since the 1990s, is Peter Mandelson, who held various ministerial posts under Blair, and in 2015 spoke at one of its events. Two years later, Mandelson said: “I work every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of [Corbyn’s] tenure in office.”

Financial support for the BAP has also come from Britain’s largest corporations. In 2000, the BAP was funded by British arms manufacturer BAE Systems and oil giant BP as well as cigarette company Philip Morris and mining giant Rio Tinto. By 2004 funders also included Monsanto, Coca-Cola and Saatchi & Saatchi. Three years later, funders also included investment bank JP Morgan and phone company Vodafone, in addition to BAE Systems and BP. These companies were still funding the group at the last available record, in 2011.

Summary of a lengthy article by Matt Kennard. Published in “Declassified” on 22 Nov 2022