The awkward past of Burnham ally who attacked Starmer

As speculation grows about a Labour leadership challenge from Andy Burnham, one of his closest allies has launched a scathing attack on Keir Starmer, claiming “a fish rots from the head”.

Nightlife entrepreneur Sacha Lord, a former Manchester night time economy advisor to mayor Burnham, said he was boycotting Labour’s conference because of “poor decisions being made from the top. Decisions that to me, don’t represent Labour Party values.”

The intervention, in an exclusive interview with the Independent, seems helpful to Burnham, seen as the most likely challenger to Starmer. But there are questions about the credibility of Lord, who left his role in January after seven years.

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The Parklife festival founder stepped down after Arts Council England announced that it had withdrawn a £401,928 grant given to one of his companies amid allegations of fraud, strenuously denied by Lord.

Primary Event Solutions, in which Lord had a 30% stake, got the money from the Cultural Recovery Fund in 2021 as part of a Covid bounceback programme intended to help arts and culture organisations.

But an investigation was launched after local journalism project Manchester Mill was told by former employees that PED had operated only as a security firm.

Lord initially threatened to sue the Mill, but dropped those plans last year. The investigation and his resignation were an embarrassment for Burnham, who had claimed that there was “a bit of a campaign against” his aide.

Even when Lord quit in January, the mayor defended him, saying: “Sacha has accepted there were inaccuracies in a grant application, and I believe him when he says there was no intention to mislead and that he made no personal gain from the grant… it is not clear to me why the Arts Council has now reached this decision.”Oddly, there was no room for even a brief mention of the controversy in the Independent story, in which Lord claimed Starmer had “shown a lack of judgement”.