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Gifts from The Morning Star
Who’s impressed by Iain McNicol’s resumé?
The Labour lord had an underwhelming Commons career as an anti-Corbyn plotter – but with a potential right-wing Labour government in the wings, some lobbying firms see money to be made by buying connections, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
Iain McNicol, then Labour Party general secretary, delivers a speech onstage at the beginning of the Labour Party annual conference in September 2015

WHAT happens to former Labour general secretaries when they retire? It turns out they join up with former Tory ministers to work for lobbying companies that regularly represent corporations and foreign authoritarian regimes.

At least that is what happened to Iain McNicol. He was general secretary of the Labour Party from 2011 to 2018.

Last December he got a new job as an “adviser” to what he calls a “strategy consultancy” called Actum. It is a relatively new US-controlled lobbying firm. McNicol was hired alongside former Tory minister Ed Vaizey.

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