Labour leadership frontrunner Keir Starmer has been challenged to immediately publish a list of campaign donations by Young Labour.
The group, which represents more than 100,000 party members aged 26 and under, said it is “simply unacceptable” for the frontrunner to keep donations secret while his rivals published voluntarily.
A letter to the candidates from Young Labour, which has backed shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, urges all candidates to ensure their donors do not have links to fossil fuels firms or private water, energy, rail or mail companies.
It comes after Starmer’s rivals, Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy, chose to make their list of donors public before next week, when the next tranche of donations are due to appear on the parliamentary register of members’ interests.
The contest this week reached a critical phase as ballots were sent out and the majority of the party’s grassroots will be casting their vote.
The shadow Brexit secretary is the clear frontrunner to replace Jeremy Corbyn, with a YouGov poll on Wednesday predicting Starmer will win with 53% of the vote.
Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, published her list of donations over £1,500 on Monday, which showed Len McCluskey’s Unite union had given her £200,000, plus an additional £35,000 from the CWU union and around £100,00 from Momentum.
Wigan MP Nandy, meanwhile, took around £200,000 from a number of individual donors, including from anti-racism campaigner Simon Tuttle, insurance businessman Jason Stockwood and Labour Leave chairman John Mills.
The letter, seen by HuffPost UK, said a failure to publish “prevents members from being able to make informed decisions and undermines our party’s commitment to transparent, democratic processes”.
Starmer’s team said a list of donors was submitted to parliament in line with the rules set out by the party’s ruling national executive committee, and the list is due to be published next week.
The letter adds: “During a general election, political parties have to immediately declare individual large donations over a certain amount. It is simply unacceptable that candidates for the Labour leadership are held to a lower standard of transparency than political parties.
“As the party that represents the interests of the majority of people, rather than the interests of corporations and elites, Labour candidates should practice what our party preaches by being open and honest with members about their funding sources.
“As a party, Labour has been at the forefront of campaigning against the influence of money in politics to further vested interests.
“It would be a violation of our party’s fundamental values if a candidate to become leader were to accept donations from individuals who may seek to further the interests of the fossil fuel industry by pressuring our future leader to roll back on our commitment to zero carbon emissions, for example.
“Similarly, individual donors with links to private water, energy, rail or mail companies could lobby a future leader to end our party’s commitment to public ownership of these vital services.”
‘Collective failure of leadership’
The donations row came as the three would-be leaders clashed over the party’s handling of anti-Semitism during a Sky News hustings in West Yorkshire’s Dewsbury.
Nandy said there had been a “collective failure of leadership at the top of the party for years” where high-profile cases had not been dealt with, adding that, as someone who is half-Indian, “I know what racism feels like”.
Taking on Starmer, who is the shadow Brexit secretary, she said: “I believe that you are sincere about this, but if we do not acknowledge how badly the shadow cabinet as a whole got this wrong we will not earn the trust of the Jewish community.”
Starmer immediately hit back telling her: “You were in the shadow cabinet when this issue came up as well.”
Nandy then shot back: “I spoke out publicly and then I left and I didn’t return.”
Starmer then turned his fire on Long-Bailey, saying: “Rebecca didn’t speak out in the same way that I did, in my view, but I don’t think it’s fair and it’s right for us to try to score points now off each other in relation to this.”
Long-Bailey told the Sky News debate: “I’m not pointing fingers or making a note of the exact dates and times that particular individuals spoke at shadow cabinet.
“Keir knows that I spoke at shadow cabinet a number of times about this. I was often the shadow cabinet member that did the media to try and explain what was happening, and expressed my concern many, many times about how we weren’t tackling this in the way that I thought we should.”
She added: “We are in a crisis and I know that it’s been soul-destroying for many of our members, because we are not an anti-Semitic or racist party.
“But many of our members went out in that general election and they knocked on the doors of Jewish voters who didn’t trust us and they were frightened of the Labour Party and we have to accept that that has happened and we have got to rebuild that trust.”