Born in Croydon, England to Indo-Trinidadian and Indo-Guyanese parents in 1964, 59-year-old Baron and Lord Waheed Alli was described in a gushing 2000 BBC profile as a member of a “new generation” of Blairite “New Labour working peers appointed to revolutionize the House of Lords,” the UK’s upper chamber of parliament – “young, Asian and from the world of media and entertainment.”
Known in the UK as a TV producer involved in the creation of the hit reality show Survivor and a variety of morning programming, Alli’s work has been characterized by critics as the epitome of “TV presented by morons for morons” reducing “the standard for breakfast viewing to a positively subterranean low” by dumbing “down a genre some media experts thought impossible to dumb down any further.”
Getting his start in business in the 1980s as a researcher for a finance magazine, Alli reportedly got his big break after being tapped by media tycoon, fraudster and suspected Mossad operator Robert Maxwell – father of convicted child sex trafficker and Jeffrey Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell. In the mid-80s, Alli became an investment banker in the City of London, and in the early 90s, got his start as a rising television media star, cofounding Planet 24 Productions with producer Charlie Parsons and musician Bob Geldof.
He’s also a fashion mogul, chairing and owning a stake in online fashion company ASOS.com until 2011, and founding Koovs, an Indian online clothing retailer, in 2012. Alli drove the latter company into bankruptcy in 2019, buying up stocks when share prices collapsed and small investors were left penniless. He is thought to have amassed a fortune of about £200 million (about $265 million US) through his various enterprises.
Alli wears his identity politics on his sleeve, expressing pride over his status as the youngest peer ever appointed to the House of Lords, and in being an openly-gay Muslim politician. But on issues that count, from the 2003 Iraq invasion to the war in Gaza, he has remained curiously silent.
Despite being assigned no formal role in Starmer’s cabinet, Alli has been characterized as the PM’s personal ‘fixer’, helping the politician in what the Financial Times characterized as Starmer’s “ruthless remaking of the Labour Party” following Jeremy Corbyn’s unceremonious ouster in 2020 on spurious “antisemitism” charges. Donating over £500,000 in cash to the party over the past two decades (£400,000 of that since Starmer became party leader), Alli was tapped as chair of election fundraising during the 2024 campaign to shift the party’s donation base from unions to the private sector.
Alli’s generosity vis-à-vis Labour and the Starmer family has apparently paid off. Last month, The Sunday Times revealed that he had been issued a temporary pass at the prime ministerial residence at Number 10 Downing Street.
In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, Tory shadow paymaster general John Glen found it “deeply concerning that a pass was granted to a Labour donor providing unfettered access to the heart of government after significant cash and non-cash donations were made to the Labour Party,” and “disappointing” that the party only responded to this “culture of cronyism after feeling the pressure in the media.” Shadow security Tom Tugendhat warned that Britons’ trust in politicians was being eroded thanks to “this type of sleaze and dishonesty, which is rotting our politics to its core.” Conservative media dubbed the scandal “passes for glasses” – a reference to reports that among the tens of thousands of pounds-worth of personal items bought for the Starmers by Alli’s personal shopper were clothing, alterations and eyeglasses.
No 10 did not indicate why Alli had been given the pass, but said recently that it was “given back several weeks ago,” and that the mogul did not attend any political meetings where civil servants were present.
In the aftermath of the Labour Party’s July election victory, Alli said that the win “has been far too long coming,” and urged Labour not to “waste the opportunity to implement change.” What sort of change he was talking about can only be guessed at.