Israel Arms Scandal Just Hit Labour HQ — And the Media Is Burying It

Right, so Keir Starmer marched into Downing Street on the promise of integrity, honesty, and accountability, a sick joke considering the Mandelson mess he’s put himself in, but an even bigger scandal is going almost totally unreported and its ready to blow, because what he has also delivered is a money trail that can be traced with a ruler from the ruins of Gaza and the money made from the weapons of its destruction, straight to the carpeted corridors of Labour HQ. In Starmer’s world, MPs and councillors are suspended for tweets seen as too pro Palestine, yet his own General Secretary’s household wealth, his appointment, control freak that he is, is topped up by lobbying for a company owned by Israel’s biggest bomb-maker. Starmer’s party disciplinarian in chief is a beneficiary of the very arsenals being used to flatten Gaza. That is not just hypocrisy, it is the kind of grotesque contradiction that makes “rules are rules” sound like a sick joke. The disciplinarian-in-chief is married to a man profiting from Israeli arms sales, and we are told to look the other way while Labour preaches morality. This story, more than the Mandelson one in my view, blows Starmer’s fake integrity to pieces and if that story brings into question his political survival, this one really ought to put it beyond doubt.
Right, so in the ruins of Gaza, as Israeli bombs tear through homes and hospitals, the weapons industry counts its profits. Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israel’s state-owned arms giant, supplies the missiles, drones, and tank armour used daily in this devastation. Its products are sold to the world as “defensive systems” while they flatten neighbourhoods and leave children buried under rubble. Few outside the defence world realise that the financial echo of those bombs reaches straight into British politics, not only through contracts or exports but directly into the household of Labour’s General Secretary as it happens.
Keir Starmer promised a Labour Party and a Labour government rooted in integrity and human rights. He punishes MPs and councillors for daring to say Gaza is a genocide. Yet his top official’s family wealth is tied to lobbying for a company owned by the very arms manufacturer supplying Israel’s war machine. This money trail is as direct as it is damning: from Israel’s bombs to Rafael, from Rafael to its UK subsidiary Pearson Engineering, from Pearson to the lobbyists at Anacta UK, and from Anacta into the bank account of its Managing Director and shareholder Teddy Ryan — husband of General Secretary Hollie Ridley.
The scandal is more than hypocrisy. It is a collapse of credibility so complete it shatters Starmer’s claim to integrity. The only question is whether he dares confront his own inner circle or whether this scandal will detonate in his face as Mandelson’s has just done.
The trail begins with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, one of Israel’s largest and most powerful arms manufacturers. Rafael is not a private company competing on the open market. It is wholly owned by the Israeli state, its profits entwined with government budgets and military policy. Its catalogue reads like a list of the weapons hammering Gaza and southern Lebanon: Spike missiles, Iron Dome batteries, Trophy tank defence systems, and armour plating for the Merkava tanks that flatten Palestinian neighbourhoods. Every missile fired translates into profit for Rafael.
Pearson Engineering, based in Newcastle, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Rafael. On the surface, Pearson is a British firm producing armoured vehicle attachments, mine-clearance devices, and other specialised engineering equipment. In reality, Pearson is part of Israel’s war economy. Its ownership by Israel’s Finance Ministry makes it an outpost of the Israeli state, its ultimate boss therefore is Bezalel Smotrich. Its profits are not reinvested in British industry but flow back to Israel.
Pearson has hired lobbying firms to smooth its path in the UK therefore, this is all damaging stuff of course. One such firm is Anacta UK, a lobbying consultancy. Anacta’s job is to burnish Pearson’s image, cultivate political access, and keep contracts flowing regardless of who Pearson’s parent company is bombing overseas. Lobbying is about more than speeches and briefing papers. It is about credibility, relationships, and access.
Anacta UK is run by Teddy Ryan. Ryan spent more than fourteen years inside the Labour Party, working as an organiser, campaign director, and strategist. He knows the party’s machinery intimately. He now sells that insider knowledge to clients. He is not only Anacta’s Managing Director but also a shareholder. That means when Pearson pays Anacta, Ryan’s personal wealth increases. His financial interest is not indirect but immediate.
Ryan’s wife is Hollie Ridley. In 2024, Starmer’s allies rushed her appointment through the National Executive Committee, presenting her as the only candidate, Starmer’s candidate, we know how he has rigged selections in the Party, only his sort will ever do and she is a 100% Starmer acolyte by all accounts. Ridley had been Labour’s executive director for nations and regions, overseeing field operations in the 2024 general election. Her loyalty to Starmer and of course to his strategist Morgan McSweeney secured her promotion to General Secretary. She is now the enforcer-in-chief, overseeing compliance, candidate selection, and above all, party discipline.
So here is the situation we have then: Rafael profits from Israel’s war machine, Pearson profits as Rafael’s UK subsidiary, Pearson pays Anacta for lobbying, Anacta pays dividends to its shareholder Teddy Ryan, and Ryan’s household income supports Ridley, Labour’s General Secretary. From bombs falling on Gaza to cheques cashed in Labour HQ, the money trail is complete.
The scandal is amplified by Ridley’s role. The General Secretary is not a ceremonial official but the guardian of Labour’s internal rules. She signs off on suspensions and expulsions. She determines what “brings the party into disrepute.”
In recent years, those rules have been weaponised against members who express solidarity with Palestine. Andy McDonald was suspended in 2023 for saying Palestinians deserve freedom “from the river to the sea.” Kate Osamor lost the whip in 2024 for referring to Gaza as a genocide. Local councillors have been disciplined for tweets or Facebook posts criticising Israel. In all these cases, the justification has been the same: their words brought Labour into disrepute.
And yet, when it comes to the General Secretary’s own household, the rules vanish. Ridley, whose family wealth is tied to lobbying for a company owned by Israel’s arms industry, faces no sanction herself. There is no suspension, no investigation, not even disclosure. The hypocrisy is staggering. Members are purged for conscience-driven speech while the leadership’s most senior figure is shielded from scrutiny despite a glaring conflict of interest. If not for the excellent investigative journalism of Declassified UK, we would know nothing of this.
This therefore raises the deeper question: who disciplines the disciplinarian? If the enforcer is compromised, the system has no mechanism for accountability at all. Unlike MPs, the General Secretary is not bound by a register of financial interests. Unlike ministers, she is not covered by the Ministerial Code. Labour has no independent oversight body for its officials. In practice, Ridley is accountable only to Starmer. Rules, it turns out, are for the underlings, but because it comes down to Starmer and Starmer alone, not acting on this hangs him out to dry surely?
Britain’s standards in public life are not ambiguous. The Ministerial Code requires ministers to declare their own financial interests and those of their spouses and close family. The Civil Service Code obliges officials to declare outside interests and manage potential conflicts. Guidance for civil servants makes clear that even the perception of conflict undermines trust. MPs must register the financial interests of their families in the Register of Members’ Interests.
All these rules are built on the Nolan Principles: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, and leadership. Integrity demands that officials avoid obligations to outside interests. Openness and honesty demand transparency in declaring private interests.
By these standards, the Ridley–Ryan case is indefensible. The perception alone is corrosive. When the household of Labour’s General Secretary profits from lobbying on behalf of Israel’s arms industry, all as Labour avoids over and over the censure measures demanded by Israeli actions in Palestine it destroys trust. That is why the Nolan Principles are explicit: perception matters as much as reality. Integrity is not only about avoiding corruption but about avoiding situations that look like corruption.
Instead of disclosure or recusal, Labour has opted for silence. The result is that the party’s leadership has shattered the very principles it claims to uphold. Starmer promised honesty. His leadership delivers opacity. He promised accountability. His inner circle enjoys absolute impunity. He promised integrity. His General Secretary’s household wealth is tied to bombs raining on Gaza.
The scandal becomes still more toxic when placed in context. In November 2023, Labour refused to support a parliamentary motion for an arms embargo on Israel. This was despite overwhelming evidence of war crimes and despite the International Court of Justice ruling that Israel was plausibly committing genocide. Spain, Belgium, and Canada acted. Labour refused. Now in government they’re just as bad.
The Mandelson affair has of course exposed the same rot. Starmer brought Peter Mandelson into his inner circle despite his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. When that scandal erupted, it humiliated Labour and exposed Starmer’s arrogance. The Ridley case repeats this pattern again, but is arguably so much worse and far more damaging and mainstream media silence appears to bear that notion out. Insiders are indulged until the scandal detonates. Outsiders are disciplined at the first sign of dissent.
This is not a coincidence but a structure. Labour under Starmer is aligned with Israel and with the arms industry. Its leadership is bound up with lobbyists and donors. Its disciplinary machine is deployed to silence criticism of Israel, not to root out corruption. The Ridley affair is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a party that has made complicity its organising principle.
Teddy Ryan’s role as a lobbyist is not incidental. He is not an outsider with no ties to Labour. He is a former senior Labour official. He worked for the party for more than fourteen years. He knows the people, the processes, the weak spots.
When a lobbyist has that insider status, that knowledge, clients are not simply buying strategy. They are buying access. They are buying credibility. They are buying the aura of someone who knows the party from the inside. When that lobbyist is married to the party’s General Secretary, the access is magnified beyond measure.
This does not require explicit corruption. Influence is more subtle than that. It is about who gets a meeting, whose proposals are taken seriously, whose contracts sail through unchallenged. When Pearson pays Anacta, it is buying Ryan’s insider knowledge and Ridley’s proximity to power. That is why the perception of conflict is corrosive. It creates the suspicion that policy positions, procurement decisions, and even the refusal to back an arms embargo may not be purely about principle, or even the facts as they are known, but about access.
Ridley’s appointment was a factional manoeuvre. She was the only candidate. The NEC rubber-stamped her selection. Her loyalty to Starmer and McSweeney was decisive in that.
Starmer’s leadership has been marked by authoritarian control. Candidate selections have been tightly stage-managed. Local parties are stripped of autonomy. Dissent is punished. The Ridley affair shows that this authoritarianism is accompanied by arrogance. The leadership believes itself untouchable. It assumes that conflicts of interest do not matter when they involve insiders. It applies rules only to the powerless.
This is factionalism masquerading as integrity. The party claims to uphold standards but in practice uses discipline as a weapon against rivals. For those at the top, there is no accountability. For the grassroots, there is no mercy. Unless of course you choose to leave, like so many of us have.
This scandal is not an abstract debate about process, ultimately it is about lives being destroyed in Gaza. Rafael’s weapons are used to bombard Palestinians. Pearson is part of Rafael’s network. Anacta lobbies for Pearson. Ryan profits from Anacta. Ridley runs Labour’s machine. Labour refuses to back an arms embargo. They are the optics.
The bombs falling on Gaza have now been linked financially to Labour HQ. That is the moral consequence. For a party that claims to stand for human rights and justice, this is a collapse of principle so profound it borders on complicity. Labour is not merely silent on Israel’s war crimes. Its leadership is financially entangled with them.
The monstrous contradiction here is unavoidable. Members are punished for saying Gaza is a genocide. Meanwhile, the General Secretary’s household profits from the very arms industry making genocide possible. This is not simply hypocrisy. It is moral bankruptcy on steroids.
Keir Starmer built his leadership on the promise of integrity. That promise, what was already left of it, now lies in ruins. The Ridley–Ryan scandal exposes Labour’s leadership as hypocritical, arrogant, and factional. The money trail from Israel’s bombs to Labour HQ shatters Starmer’s credibility.
The scandal leaves an unresolved question hanging though: will Starmer dare to discipline his own inner circle, or will this hypocrisy implode his leadership as Mandelson’s scandal is already doing? Will he have to focus group it first? Rules are ruthlessly applied to the powerless but never to his clique at the top. If Labour cannot police its own conflicts of interest, it cannot credibly govern Britain and Lord knows even without the scandals Starmer’s inate political ineptitude has proven that already.
The money trail does not lie. From bombs falling on Gaza to bank transfers in Westminster, it is clear as day. Starmer’s integrity has not just cracked. It has collapsed. And the only question left is how long the public will tolerate a party whose claim to honesty and genuinely how much longer they’ll put up with Starmer’s self serving and authoritarian failure.
Not only is this failure making itself apparent with regards to Ridley and to Mandelson, but also on our streets. How long did it take Starmer to condemn Tommy Robinson’s obscene Unite the Kingdom march? 900 pensioners and disabled people arrested for peacefully protesting by holding placards one week, the next only 25 violent thugs get the same treatment? Authoritarian begetting violence and fascism basically is not a good look for Starmer either, this is rapidly shaping up to be the worst week of his career to date, so get all the details of that story along with how Robinson’s rancidness is straight out of the same playbook that brought us Charlie Kirk in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch.
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