As predictable as night following day, there WAS some backscratching involved in the £4m donation the Labour Party got from offshore tax-registered hedge fund Quadrature. The pay off? The co-chair of a board of its charitable foundation arm – Rachel Kyte – is now the UK government’s climate envoy.
Thanks to openDemocracy doing the journalism the corporate media consistently fail to, we now know that the Labour Party accepted a huge donation just after Rishi Sunak called July’s general election from Quadrature Capital.
We also know that the company behind it invest themselves in the worst of the worst. However, for a final sting in the tail, look no further than what this hedge fund does with some of the cash it makes.
Labour Party: £4m in slush funding…?
As openDemocracy revealed:
The Labour Party’s largest-ever donation came from a Cayman Islands-registered hedge fund with shares worth hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuels, private health firms, arms manufacturers and asset managers.
While the £4m donation by Quadrature Capital is the sixth-largest in British political history, it is noteworthy not just for its size, but also its timing.
Of course, no one should really be surprised that Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is accepting donations from hedge funds registered in tax havens. However, there were further revelations from openDemocracy. These include the fact that Quadrature had investments in fossil fuel, arms, and private healthcare companies.
However, the donation got its reward for Quadrature.
Now we know what Quadrature’s £4m was for
As journalist Michael Crick revealed on X, the Labour government’s new climate envoy is Rachel Kyte – who just happens to sit on the advisory board of Quadrature Charitable Foundation:
Interesting. Labour’s new climate envoy Rachel Kyte is co-chair of climate advisory board of Quadrature Climate Foundation, linked to Quadrature hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands which invests in fossil fuel firms. Quadrature gave Labour £4m on 28 May, at the start of the…
— Michael Crick (@MichaelLCrick) September 25, 2024
The foundation is “fully funded by Quadrature” – by its own admission. The Guardian reported on Kyte’s appointment – but failed to mention her links to Quadrature. It instead dedicated hundreds of words to praising her. Odd, when you realise that just a year prior, the Guardian ran an expose on Quadrature.
In 2023, it noted that:
Some of the world’s best-known climate campaign groups have taken millions of pounds in donations from a foundation run by billionaire hedge fund bosses whose investment fund has invested in fossil fuel companies, the Guardian has learned.
Groups including the European Climate Foundation, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have taken millions of pounds in grants over the past two years from Quadrature Climate Foundation, according to filings with the Charity Commission. WWF told the Guardian on Tuesday it would investigate the donation.
Quadrature Climate Foundation was set up by Quadrature Capital, a multibillion-pound investment fund founded by the enigmatic billionaires Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya. Quadrature Capital has stakes worth more than $170m (£135m) in fossil fuel companies, according to filings with US regulators.
What does a £4m Quadrature bung get you these days?
If you’re wondering what Quadrature will be getting for its bung, then it could be all manner of things. The foundation supports electric vehicle development, tech to remove/reduce methane omissions – but crucially for Labour, also ‘carbon dioxide removal’.
As the Canary’s Hannah Sharland reported, Labour is all over capitalist carbon capture and storage – essentially a greenwashing ruse that means rich people can keep burning fossil fuels. So, given Kyte’s own capitalist credentials (previously having worked for the World Bank), she’s a perfect fit to push Quadrature’s agendas via the Labour government. Carbon dioxide removal is the next step up from capture – essentially where you remove the CO2 from the atmosphere. Again, it means the Global North can keep burning fossil fuels.
Overall, if you were wondering how Keir Starmer’s band of freebie-addicted goons were going to shape up – then look no further than the £4m Quadrature bung and subsequent appointment of Rachel Kyte. It’s got greenwashing capitalism written all over it, which is bad news for all of us.
Featured image via the Canary
