ROBERT JENRICK’S anti-migrant worker campaign is being funded by migrant investors.

You might get the impression that Jenrick doesn’t like migrants. But he relies on some big donations from an investment company controlled by a migrant — it looks like cash is a bigger issue than nationality for the shadow home secretary.

In September Jenrick accepted £15,000 from a company called Attestor Limited, in his words, “to support my duties as an MP.” He previously took £25,000 from Attestor this March. So Attestor is helping to fund Jenrick’s political activity, which includes complaining about “mass immigration.”

Attestor, a Mayfair-based investment fund, is owned and controlled by Jan-Christoph Peters, a German citizen resident in Britain.

Attestor is ultimately controlled via a parent company based in the Cayman Islands, a tax haven. Alongside owner Jan-Christoph Peters, the firm has three more directors. They are British-based but two are German, one Italian.

The firm funding Jenrick is entirely directed by migrants. But migrants who control a lot of money, so they have a way of making migrant-averse Jenrick like them.  

Jenrick wants to make ordinary people resent their working-class or low-income migrant neighbours but is happy taking money from rich migrants. You might think that Jenrick really cares more about money than migration. Jenrick was previously such a blandly Cameron-centrist-pro-EU Tory that he was called “Robert Generic.”

He now complains about there being not enough “white faces” on the streets, using the language of the National Front.

Jenrick has consistently been on the side of low-tax, low-regulation free-market conservatism, but has only recently released his inner bigot, so it is hard not to believe his conversion from “generic” Tory to knee-jerk bigot isn’t a deeply cynical political ploy, a willingness to use bigotry to preserve the power of the rich.

There is also some evidence of a cynical turnaround by Attestor. In the 2019 election, when Labour was very firmly on the left, Attestor gave a £75,000 donation to the Liberal Democrats.

The Liberal Democrats are very far from Jenrick on attitudes to migrants. But they were, compared to Labour, much closer in terms of low tax and low regulation. It looks like Attestor is willing to fund “centrist” free-market politicians who pose as liberals or who pose as bigots, as long as their economic interests align. I did ask the firm’s representatives why they were funding Jenrick, but they declined to comment.

Attestor specialises in “distressed debt” — that is they buy shares or other investments in companies that are in really serious trouble, hoping to make money out of companies in crisis.

So maybe its investments in Jenrick and the Conservatives more widely — Attestor has given over £130,000 to Tory central office since 2020 — are a form of “distressed debt,” investing in a party when it is in trouble and weak to get more power in the future.

Attestor’s backing of Jenrick while he goes on his migrant-bashing rounds fits into something of a pattern of finance firms and businessmen supporting bigotry. Hedge fund investor Paul Marshall and Dubai-based investment firm Legatum are both key to the growth of anti-migrant and racist ideas in politics.

Marshall and Legatum jointly own GB News, a key propagandist for this shift right on race and migration, and invest in other related “think tanks” and organisations. Previously both Marshall and Legatum were politically involved but mostly pushing “free-market” ideas of deregulation, privatisation and low taxes.

These capitalists seem to have turned up the nationalist-hate dial after the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent stagnation made free-market capitalism much less popular. It is hard not to think their turn to promoting prejudice is designed to distract popular anger against big business and big investors.

Quadrature cuts the purse strings

KEIR STARMER’S richest backers seem to have lost interest in Labour, but are still interested in being very rich, according to the latest accounts of hedge fund Quadrature Capital.

In May 2024, in the run-up to the election, Quadrature Capital gave Labour £4 million. At the time Starmer was turning rightwards, and making Labour more of a low-tax-for-the-rich “business-friendly” party.

Labour was losing members and not really gaining any votes, so this was a welcome vote of confidence in Starmer’s Labour.

Starmer did get elected: the split on the right between Tories and Reform mean his relatively low votes translated into a huge majority. Since the election, his and Labour’s popularity have plummeted, as his do-little centrist plan has hit up against ongoing economic stagnation and public-sector decline. This even seems to have put off his business backers. Quadrature has not donated any more money to Labour.

It has, however, continued being very rich. Quadrature is owned by tech guys Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya. Quadrature’s latest accounts, published this month, show Greg and Suneil paid themselves £11.6m each. These accounts cover January 2024 to January 2025, including the £4m donation to Labour. They show the firm made a £410m profit in that year, so the Labour donation was relatively small beer for the investment firm.

But Quadrature hasn’t made any donations to Labour since then. Starmer’s very rich supporters seem to be fair-weather friends. Quadrature specialises in “automated trading” — it aims to make its profits from buying and selling shares according to computer programmes it has developed.

They also see themselves as a very “ethical” firm and put a lot of money towards climate change charities. However, their investments don’t seem very ethical. Their top current investments include $177m in private health firm United Health, which is very interested in NHS privatisation; and $1-5m in Palantir, the sinister tech firm which is also very interested in NHS and other outsourcing. They also hold $33m in Boeing, the civil and military aerospace firm, which makes their claim to be worried about climate change look a bit shaky.

Quadrature has said its shareholdings are determined by its computer trading rather than ethical stances. Maybe their computer also said “no” to putting more money into Labour.

Follow Solomon Hughes on X @solhugheswriter.