{"id":397677,"date":"2026-01-29T23:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/397677\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T23:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T23:16:08","slug":"ex-labour-mps-lobbying-firm-offered-photo-with-minister-and-vip-dinner-for-30k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/397677\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Labour MP’s lobbying firm offered photo with minister and VIP dinner for \u00a330k"},"content":{"rendered":"

Murphy, a former minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, founded Arden Strategies shortly after losing his parliamentary seat in 2015.<\/p>\n

It has lobbied Sir Keir’s administration on behalf of arms manufacturers, oil companies and energy giants, according to the public register of consultant lobbyists.<\/p>\n

The company is not listed as a member of trade body Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA), which requires members to list all their public affairs clients.<\/p>\n

Arden provided support to more than 30 prospective Labour MPs in the run-up to the 2024 general election, according to social media posts seen by the BBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The total amount Arden spent is not known because the individual sums appear to have fallen below the threshold for sponsorship to be declared by MPs.<\/p>\n

Labour Party chair Anna Turley and business minister Blair McDougall used to work for the lobbying firm. Former Labour MP Holly Lynch is listed as a current employee.<\/p>\n

There is no suggestion Turley, McDougall or Lynch were involved in any events offering access to government employees.<\/p>\n

Murphy was a Labour MP for 18 years and held ministerial jobs in the New Labour years, including as Europe minister and Scottish secretary.<\/p>\n

He was shadow defence secretary and shadow international development secretary under Ed Miliband’s leadership before briefly leading Scottish Labour and then losing his East Renfrewshire seat at the 2015 general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Murphy, a former minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, founded Arden Strategies shortly after losing his parliamentary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-397677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}