(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Harry Burns: Ex-Labour chief who quit for Change UK now runs PR for Rwanda deal [1] [] Date: 2024-02 A former senior Labour staffer who bragged about trying to “bring Corbyn down” before quitting to help set up Change UK is now working as a spin doctor for the Tories’ Rwanda-UK asylum deal, openDemocracy can reveal. Harry Burns, then named Harry Gregson, was Labour’s acting regional director for the south-east in 2016, going on to head up its election campaign and support team the following year, according to his LinkedIn profile. After the party did better than expected in the polls, Burns said he quit because “it became clear that Corbyn was getting close to government”. “I left the Labour Party and then I tried to do everything I can to bring Corbyn down,” he said when being interviewed by Nigel Farage on GBNews in October. What do you think? Win a £10 book voucher for sharing your views about openDemocracy. Tell us Burns said he “helped to establish” Change UK, then The Independent Group of MPs (or ‘TIG’), a short-lived political party formed by 11 breakaway MPs – eight from Labour and three from the Conservatives – in 2019. Months after all the Change UK MPs lost their seats in the 2019 election and the party was disbanded, Burns joined Chelgate, a reputation management and PR firm, as its head of international. The first evidence of Burns’s involvement with the Rwandan government came in August 2022, four months after the government’s Rwanda scheme was first announced, when he responded on behalf of the Rwandan government to a Guardian journalist who had been barred from speaking to refugees during a press trip. At the time, the scheme had not yet been ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court. According to the paper, Burns had been “hired by” the central African country to answer international press enquiries. But Chelgate’s chair Terence Fane-Saunders denied that his company worked for the Rwandan government after being caught up in an undercover sting by the campaign group Led By Donkeys. Burns left Chelgate in August 2022 to join another PR firm, Crestview Strategy – but still appears to be earning a living defending the controversial Rwanda asylum deal. When openDemocracy contacted the Rwandan government this week over allegations that housing for asylum seekers in Kigali was actually being sold privately, we instead received a response from Burns at Crestview’s London office. Asked today whether his role was funded by the Home Office, Burns replied that the UK government department was “not a client of Crestview nor do they in any way pay for our work”. An hour later, a senior Home Office spokesperson working on the Rwanda deal called to confirm that Burns’ role is not directly funded by the department, but said that “we both work together on the partnership”. The Home Office spokesperson did not deny that the Rwandan government could have spent some of the £250m it has been given by the UK on communications work. After publication, the department told us that it did in fact deny this. It is not clear how either London-based Chelgate or Canadian firm Crestview won the Rwandan PR contract; neither appears to have a significant history of UK public sector work, suggesting Burns’s political credentials may have played a part. UK government transparency disclosures reveal that James Bethell, then a health minister, had two phone calls with Crestview in May 2020 to discuss possible Covid-19 communications work, but no deal appears to have been struck. Crestview recently announced on Linkedin that it had opened an office in the Rwandan capital, writing: “From its haunting past, Rwanda has transformed into a trendy and vibrant country.” Burns was among the agency’s staff pictured in a photo of the office. Crestview’s UK clients include Entain, the gambling firm behind Ladbrokes and Coral, according to the parliamentary Register of Consultant Lobbyists. In 2022, Entain was handed a record £17m fine for failing to protect customers after new gambling laws intended to protect them came in. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/harry-burns-labour-change-uk-2017-jeremy-corbyn-crestview-rwanda/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/