(Bloomberg) — A former think-tank boss recruited to work on Keir Starmer’s reset of the UK government agenda has left his role after only two weeks.
Tom Kibasi was seconded to bolster the UK prime minster’s top team in Downing Street after a difficult first year in office, Bloomberg reported in August. Several people across government raised concerns about his appointment according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified while sharing internal discussions. Kibasi — who helped Starmer win the Labour Party leadership in 2020 — left Downing Street at the end of August despite initially being expected to be there for several months.
A Bloomberg News investigation has found that while director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, Kibasi was accused in an internal report of displaying an “often aggressive communication style,” and he was criticized by the IPPR’s senior management team and the union representing staff over his alleged role in a previously unreported cash crisis at one of the country’s foremost progressive think-tanks.
In a statement to Bloomberg on Aug. 28, Kibasi said he was returning to NHS England — which manages the country’s health service — where he was named executive director for strategy in May. Kibasi said his tenure as director of the IPPR had been subject to unfair allegations, which he said he had reported to police.
Kibasi worked on a short-term project at Number 10 which has finished, a Downing Street official said.
The 43-year-old was brought in last month to work with Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, on an unnamed strategy project, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg when he was seconded. It was seen at the time as part of the preparations for a widely anticipated reset, with the prime minister attempting to reverse a stubborn drag in polling figures and sketch out a new vision for his ailing premiership.
That reset began in earnest with a raft of changes to the Downing Street team last week, designed to increase the economic heft of Starmer’s office and boost delivery of policy promises. But the reboot was overshadowed by the investigation into the tax affairs of the former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, which led to her resignation and forced a cabinet reshuffle on Friday.
Still, several people from across the Labour Party and government have questioned the judgement involved in bringing Kibasi into Downing Street just as Starmer and his team were seeking to restore confidence in their operations. Downing Street didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Kibasi took over at the IPPR in April 2016 having previously been a partner in the healthcare division at McKinsey & Co Inc. Less than a year into his role as director, a report, sent to Kibasi, by a group representing women in the IPPR referred to his “confrontational, often aggressive communication style” and referenced an instance of him being “physically angry.” It also referred to “gender issues” and “the Director’s aggressive and dismissive tone with women.”
Lawyers for Kibasi told Bloomberg that a 2017 investigation by the charity’s trustees found that his “communication style was an area for improvement, but it was categorically found that there were no grounds for concern about our client’s conduct.” They also stated that during Kibasi’s time at the IPPR “more women were appointed, promoted and received merit payments than men” and the charity’s gender pay gap “turned positive” for the first time.
In May 2017, staff discovered a cashflow projection, seen by Bloomberg, which stated that the IPPR needed to make savings of £600,000 ($810,000), projecting cuts of £75,000 a month. “IPPR is in serious breach of its reserve policy, such that the present cash balance presents a serious risk to the Institute’s viability,” the staff union said in a statement to trustees in May 2017. “We understand that significant in-year savings will need to be made.”
“The external fundraising challenge is insufficient to fully explain the recent and rapid deterioration in IPPR’s cash position,” the statement added, expressing concern that Kibasi had “not taken due care to understand IPPR’s finances” and described him as “ignoring warnings and advice” around the organization’s deteriorating financial position.
The charity made several redundancies following the discovery of the cash shortfall. Kibasi’s response to concerns was “excessively defensive, and at times aggressive,” the statement added, saying that women employees in particular were concerned about his communication style.
The IPPR’s union committee subsequently organized a vote of no-confidence in Kibasi in May 2017, in which 44 members of staff took part. Records show the charity had 46 permanent staff members in March 2017. Kibasi lost the vote after 70.45% of staff supported the motion.
The think-tank’s senior management team formally registered no-confidence in Kibasi as director. Writing to the trustees, they said they saw “significant risk to the organization should the director remain in his current role,” referring to issues with staff morale and retention, as well as “wider leadership, organizational and stakeholder management issues.”
Yet Kibasi remained at the IPPR. Ara Darzi — then a Labour member of the House of Lords, who conducted a report into the NHS for Wes Streeting, the health secretary, last year — offered a £48,000 donation to the IPPR on condition that Kibasi kept his position, according to an unsigned and undated copy of the funding agreement, seen by Bloomberg. It said: “this donation shall be repayable in full in the event that the employment of IPPR’s director Tom Kibasi ends before 30th September 2018.”
Darzi didn’t respond to a request for comment. The IPPR confirmed the donation, but denied that it was linked to Kibasi’s continued employment at the charity.
The IPPR said its trustees had “conducted a thorough investigation” into the complaints against Kibasi and found that while he “had a tendency to brusqueness in his communication style that this was not gendered in any way and found no grounds for concern about his conduct.”
It added that during Kibasi’s time in charge the “IPPR’s financial position greatly improved.”
“I have been subject to a very distressing campaign of harassment where false and malicious rumors are spread to journalists and to others that claim I was accused of serious misconduct at the IPPR,” Kibasi said in the Aug. 28 statement, adding that trustees had found the claims to be “wholly false.”
Lawyers working for Kibasi subsequently told Bloomberg that he had been misled as to the IPPR’s financial situation by a senior colleague, as had the senior management team and staff. Kibasi left the IPPR in December 2019. Two months later, the chair of the charity’s trustees sent him a letter which “confirms that the Trustees had full confidence in our client and highlights his many achievements as director of the Institute,” according to Kibasi’s lawyer.
The IPPR and Kibasi’s lawyer both refused to share the letter from the chair of trustees with Bloomberg.
Starmer’s ‘Architect’
Kibasi, has said that he was “one of the strategic architects of Starmer’s successful leadership campaign” in 2020. He and Starmer discussed plans for how best to position the politician to replace Jeremy Corbyn, and was also part of the so-called ‘Arlington Group’, which plotted Starmer’s leadership bid, according to Get In, a book by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund.
He was not, however, given a permanent role with the party following Starmer’s victory in 2020. A senior Labour official told colleagues that he wasn’t given a job due to concerns around his style, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A year after Starmer took control of Labour, Kibasi wrote in The Guardian newspaper that: “If Starmer were to depart as leader tomorrow, he would not leave a trace of a meaningful political project in his wake.
“Our client neither applied nor put himself forward for consideration for any Labour Party role,” Kibasi’s lawyer said.
After leaving the IPPR, Kibasi worked in NHS Trusts, until being appointed by Streeting to help write a 10-year plan for the NHS — which among other things calls for restoration of “rigorous financial discipline” — in February. He stepped back as lead author after some in government were underwhelmed by the first draft, according to the Financial Times.
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