This man’s shadow looms over Keir Starmer’s ailing administration.
But did you know that Tony Blair met his top Labour Party financer at the home of a senior Israeli diplomat?
I’ve been doing some digging, and I can’t believe what I’ve discovered…🧵
Blair’s rise to power was bankrolled by Michael Levy, also known as “Lord Cashpoint”. Levy raised over £100 million for the Labour Party.
But Blair first met Levy at a dinner party hosted by Israeli diplomat Gideon Meir.
Meir was deputy chief at the Israeli embassy in London.
Blair and Levy had a mutual friend in Eldred Tabachnik, former head of the Board of Deputies.
Michael’s Levy’s son, Daniel, is a former Israeli soldier who later served as an assistant to Israeli PM Ehud Olmert.
Olmert called Blair “A true friend of the State of Israel”.
Levy also convinced other pro-Israeli millionaires to back Labour:
Emmanuel Kaye, a key backer of Labour Friends of Israel.
Westfield chairman Frank Lowy, who served in the terrorist organisation Haganah.
And Trevor Chinn, a director and funder of McSweeney’s Labour Together.
In 2024, after being nominated by Labour Friends of Israel, Chinn received the Israeli Presidential Medal of Honor.
Two months later, Lowy won the same award, with Israeli President Isaac Herzog thanking him for “forming magnificent connections for Israel around the world.”
One of Tony Blair’s first acts upon entering parliament in 1983 was to join Labour Friends of Israel.
Lobbyist Jonathan Mendelsohn explained: “Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to LFI meetings.”
Mendelsohn has also funded Wes Streeting.
Blair was previously appointed as a “Middle East envoy”.
At the same time, he was a patron of the Jewish National Fund, the largest builder of illegal Israeli settlements.
Wanted fugitive Benjamin Netanyahu is another JNF patron.
Business Secretary Peter Kyle, a former vice-chair of Labour Friends of Israel who served as a special adviser under Blair, has celebrated his continued influence.
Kyle has stated that Starmer benefits from having an “elder statesman...people around the world know and trust”.
This month, Tony Blair’s biographer Anthony Seldon bizarrely suggested that Starmer should appoint Blair as foreign secretary to save his own premiership.
But the truth is, Blair’s influence on the current government is already “from policy to personnel…everywhere.”
These investigations take MANY hours of meticulous research.
With Keir Starmer in meltdown mode, this man is being presented as the saviour of the Labour Party.
But did you know that last time Andy Burnham stood for leader, he pledged that his FIRST foreign trip would be to Israel?
Here’s what else I’ve discovered:🧵
During the last Labour administration, Andy Burnham’s principal adviser was Jennifer Gerber.
In 2010, Gerber was appointed director of lobby group Labour Friends of Israel, which she led for the next decade.
LFI refuses to reveal its donors.
In 2016, then Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham was one of the Labour MPs who “flocked” to support Labour Friends of Israel under Jennifer Gerber’s leadership.
He was joined by then Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, Jess Phillips, and Dan Jarvis, amongst others.
NEW: With local elections imminent, the Labour Party fear a disastrous set of results under the toxic Starmer brand.
But I’ve discovered that a member of Labour’s NEC admitted to being “recruited” into politics by a future IDF press officer.
And he’s standing for re-election:🧵
Peter Mason currently serves on Labour’s NEC and the executive committee of their London branch. He is standing for re-election as a councillor in Ealing.
Mason has previously said that he was encouraged into the political sphere by “one of [his] closest friends, in Israel now”.
Peter Mason was referring to Yair Zivan, his predecessor at the Union of Jewish Students (UJS).
Zivan left the UJS to work as a Press Officer for the IDF.
He then became a Foreign Affairs Adviser and International Media Spokesman to former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.
For the last three weeks, I’ve been reporting live from Birmingham Crown Court.
Majid Novsarka faces up to 14 years in prison, solely on the basis of social media posts.
Here’s what the jury were NOT told:🧵
Mr. Novsarka is accused of inviting and/or expressing support for a proscribed organisation (Hamas).
Hamas was proscribed in its entirety in the UK in November 2021 by then Home Secretary Priti Patel.
Patel had also attempted to funnel British aid money to the Israeli military.
Four years before her proscription of Hamas, Patel was forced to resign from government after conducting secret, unauthorised meetings with Israeli ministers, including Benjamin Netanyahu.
The meetings were arranged by Stuart Polak, a director of Conservative Friends of Israel.