To Disguise Their Corporate Lobbying As Grassroots Campaigns Airbnb And Uber Use Activist Tactics
What David Cameron once called “the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money”, has come back to haunt him. By lobbying on behalf of Lex Greensill’s influential finance company, the former UK prime minister’s prediction that lobbying would be “the next big scandal” has been proven right.
With Prime Minister Boris Johnson calling an inquiry into the episode, it all raises questions about the lobbying laws the Cameron government introduced in 2014. They appear so weak that seemingly no elements of the current saga were illegal.
Exemptions in the rules that prevent in-house lobbyists like Cameron from having to appear on the statutory register have left up to 80% of corporate lobbying untouched.
Yet this is not the only aspect of corporate lobbying that sho...