Lisa Nandy defended in ‘cronyism’ row over appointment of football regulator
The duck test… “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”.
The culture secretary apologised after she was found to have breached the governance code on public appointments by appointing a former Labour donor to the role.
Lisa Nandy insists it’s not cronyism, merely a regrettable oversight. £2,900 from one of the very men she later installed as chair of the new football regulator? Just a coincidence, she says. Nothing to see here, folks, just another Westminster case of “oops, I forgot.”
It’s the state of British politics today when ministers get to brush off undeclared connections and cosy appointments with a perfunctory apology; the distinction between “error” and “ethical breach” is vanishingly small. If it walks like cronyism and quacks like cronyism, you’re probably looking at a duck.
Lisa Nandy has found herself accused of “cronyism” after admitting she “unknowingly” broke the ministerial code by failing to declare that she’d received £2,900 in donations from David Kogan, the very man she later selected to chair the new football watchdog.
In October, Mr Kogan, a former broadcasting executive with close ties to the Premier League, was appointed chair of the Independent Football Regulator (IFR), a body first conceived by the Tories in the aftermath of the European Super League fiasco. His appointment has since been ruled to have breached the public appointments code in three separate ways.
Sir William Shawcross, the Commissioner for Public Appointments, found that Nandy failed to disclose Mr Kogan’s donations to her 2020 leadership campaign; that the potential conflict of interest was never discussed during his interview; and that Mr Kogan’s Labour Party connections were quietly overlooked.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) failed to properly disclose Kogan’s political activity, including his directorship at LabourList and over £33,000 in donations to the Labour Party and its MPs in the five years prior to his appointment.
Kogan, a former director of LabourList and author of two books on the Labour Party, also donated to Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign.
In a letter to the Prime Minister, Ms Nandy wrote:
“I deeply regret this error. I appreciate the perception it could create, but it was not deliberate and I apologise for it.”
She added that she had carried out “robust checks” before the appointment process, but somehow missed the two donations, which, she insists, she only discovered recently.
Sir Keir Starmer, in his written reply, assured her she had “acted in good faith” but conceded that “the process followed was not entirely up to the standard expected.”
Mr Kogan, for his part, welcomed the report and said his “suitability for the role has never been in question.”
Yet to pretend she didn’t know the former director of LabourList, a publication that has published hundreds of articles about her, by her, and routinely promotes her political work, stretches belief to the point of farce. The fact is, she’s been an author of hundreds of articles stretching back over 15 years on LabourList.
Nandy isn’t some backbencher lost in the Westminster fog; she’s been a frontbencher, a leadership contender, and a regular contributor to the very site Kogan once ran.
If she truly didn’t recognise his name when appointing him, that raises an equally damning question: should someone so apparently unaware of her own political ecosystem really be trusted to oversee national regulation?
Because either Ms Nandy knew and ignored the conflict, or she didn’t know, in which case she’s admitting to a level of due diligence that would make a parish councillor blush.
A minister who doesn’t know where her donations come from or who she’s writing for isn’t just careless, she’s a liability. And if this is the standard of “integrity” in the Starmer era, then it’s not just the watchdog that needs regulating, but the ministers who appoint them.
It’s a duck…
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