Business is booming at Anacta Strategies, a lobbying firm that advised Labour in the 2024 election and has shown significant growth in its first full year of operations, newly filed company accounts reveal.
Anacta — which has close ties to Keir Starmer and describes itself as "the leading Labour-specialist advisory firm” — counts among its clients Pearson Engineering, an Israeli-owned defence firm which won a government contract worth £10m, its largest ever, with the Ministry of Defence last year.
It has also lobbied the government on behalf of Airbnb, Visa and Sky, according to the statutory lobbying register, but does not publish a full list of its clients and is not signed up to the industry’s voluntary code of conduct.
Anacta billed Labour £90,000 for campaigns and strategy advice as part of the party’s successful election campaign in 2024, according to Electoral Commission data, and retains close ties to the party. Anacta staff have held frequent meetings with several senior party figures since the election.
‘Corporate capture’
Founded by two lobbyists linked to the Australian Labor Party, Anacta’s first hire in the UK was Teddy Ryan, who left his role as a director of the Labour Party to join the company not long after the general election in 2024. Ryan had spent much of his time in the party developing its relationship with business, founding the Labour Business Network and organising the party’s first City business conferences. Anacta’s UK arm is a subsidiary of its Australian parent, which continues to support much of its operations as per company accounts.
Last November the firm hired Matt Faulding as senior counsel. Faulding, who previously served as secretary of the Parliamentary Labour Party, is a close confidant of former Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and played a key role in the selection process for the general election.
Weeks into his gig at Anacta, Faulding hosted a private breakfast for clients and politicos at which Clare Reynolds — who served as No 10's political director until September that year, and remains a senior Labour official — offered attendees "invaluable tips on when, who and how to engage with No.10,” as the firm wrote on LinkedIn. The firm hosts monthly private roundtables like this for clients, oftentimes with MPs and Labour Party insiders.
There are rules designed to prevent people moving directly from government into lobbying, but because both Faulding and Ryan were employees of the Labour Party rather than the government, neither was subject to them.
The firm effectively leverages both professional and personal connections within the party. Reynolds, who still works for the party and attended the December breakfast event, is married to Labour's chief whip, Jonathan Reynolds. Anacta’s managing director Ryan is married to Labour general secretary Hollie Ridley. Both couples appeared in the recent Politico Power Couple rankings, ranked first and 38th respectively.
Another Anacta staffer, Kate Forrester, is married to the No-10 aide Paul Ovenden who resigned last September. Forrester joined Anacta from APCO, the PR firm at the centre of the Labour Together scandal. Forrester ran APCO’s London public affairs team when Labour Together commissioned the firm, leading them to investigate journalists including Paul Holden over their reporting on the group’s finances.
The firm publishes limited accounts, but its most recent books give an indication of the scale of Anacta UK's growth in its first full year under a Labour government: Outstanding invoices stood at £210,123 by June 2025, up from £700 the previous year not long after its launch. To be clear: outstanding invoices offer a very limited snapshot of dues still owed to the firm at the close of the financial year, not the total business booked in that period. Even so, the sharp increase suggests a significant uptick in business.
The firm has registered more clients with the statutory watchdog since the period covered by these accounts, suggesting it has continued to grow.
Labour MP Jon Trickett, who has long argued for sweeping reform to reduce conflict of interests around the so-called ‘revolving door’ between government and big business, told openDemocracy: “In a democracy, power and influence is supposed to be exercised by the voters. But when private wealth and big corporations capture the state then democracy itself is subverted.
“This corporate capture occurs in a variety of ways, one of which is the revolving door whereby one day someone is ensconced deep in political structures and shortly afterwards the knowledge and contacts they have acquired are on offer to the highest bidder.”
‘Gaping holes in the system’
Opposition MPs have raised questions in parliament about Anacta's access to government, with Conservatives John Glen and Mike Wood asking ministers whether Anacta's representatives met with any special advisers in either the Treasury or Downing Street. The government did not offer a meaningful response.
The statutory definition of lobbying which triggers a requirement to register with the official watchdog, the Office of the Registrar of Consultant Lobbyists, does not include lobbying of special advisers — political appointees like McSweeney who often wield significant influence in government but do not have the statutory power of either elected ministers or civil servants.
Newly released government transparency data shows that Anacta hosted McSweeney for lunch in mid-December – recorded only as hospitality, meaning there is no indication of the purpose of this meeting. The firm also attended a roundtable last May with then-tech secretary Peter Kyle, involving Pearson Engineering, fintech firm Revolut and Amazon Web Services.
Unlike many of its competitors, Anacta is not a member of the PRCA's Public Affairs Board and is not signed up to its Code for Professional Lobbying — the lobbying industry's own voluntary ethical standard. It has this in common with the other major Starmerite lobbying firm, Arden Strategies. Lobbyists not signed up to this code are not required to publish a full list of their clients, only those on whose behalf they carry out lobbying activities which meet the narrow statutory definition required to register with the official watchdog.
Kamila Kingstone, programme director at Spotlight on Corruption, said this case shows that “the current framework for lobbying transparency is not fit for purpose”.
She said: “Anacta Strategies is yet another example of why comprehensive lobbying regulation is urgently needed. When a firm created by well-connected former party staffers can operate outside any code of conduct and lobby special advisers without triggering transparency requirements, it exposes gaping holes in the system.
“The public deserves to know who is influencing government. If we are serious about restoring trust in politics, we need stronger, more comprehensive rules that bring all lobbying into the light and ensure fair access to government decision-makers.”
Anacta Strategies did not respond to a request for comment.
