Liz Truss’ co-campaign director has lobbied the UK government on behalf of Libya’s controversial parliament and a company that won the biggest PPE deal of the pandemic through the VIP fast lane.
Mark Fullbrook, an ally of Boris Johnson’s former strategist Lynton Crosby, is expected to join Downing Street as Truss’s chief of staff after working on her campaign this summer.
The political consultant set up his own company, Fullbrook Strategies, this spring and has since lobbied the UK government. His clients included Libya’s house of representatives, which has twice tried to topple the UN-backed government of national unity in Tripoli, and Sante Global, formerly Unispace Health, which was awarded a £680m PPE contract in 2020.
The parliament, which was last elected in 2014, is seen by some as a bloc in Libya’s democratic elections and is allied with the rival government in the east of the country, which is seeking recognition from the UK and others.
When Libya’s elections were postponed last year, the UK diplomatic mission in Libya published a message on its Twitter account saying it continues to recognize the interim government of national unity “as the authority charged with leading Libya towards elections and does not approve of the creation of parallel governments or institutions”.
Fullbrook Strategies also lobbied this year on behalf of Sante Global, formerly known as Unispace Health, which was one of the biggest beneficiaries of £680m of Covid contracts during the pandemic, despite having previously been a subsidiary of an Australian office design company. .
Unispace referred to the VIP lane for fast-tracking of Covid PPE offers from companies, with the referral revealed to have come from “GCF Covid-19 Requests, PO Box, Cabinet Office”.
In February, the Department of Health said Unispace Health, now Sante Global, had supplied NHS with £484m of PPE items from April 2020 to December 2021, adding: “We are working with the company on a commercial solution for the remainder of the contract.” In June, the government said it had “set up a contract resolution team to maximize the value received from contracts for personal protective equipment”.
Chris Bryant, the Labor MP and chairman of the standards committee, said Fullbrook should “clear all his financial interests and clients over the past year before entering Downing Street”.
A spokesman for the Truss campaign said: “All commercial clients of Fullbrook Strategies Ltd are declared on the UK Lobbying Register. The company suspended trading activities on August 31.”
If he steps into Number 10 as chief of staff or in another senior adviser role, he will have to declare interests and take advice from the government’s justice and ethics team on how to prevent any conflicts. A source in the Truss campaign said Fullbrook did not lobby Truss while she was foreign secretary.
His company’s website now has a message saying it is no longer working. Until recently, however, it boasted that it was “trusted by presidents, prime ministers and international business leaders around the globe,” while describing Crosby’s C|T Group as a cousin company.
Fullbrook’s website biography described him as having advised politicians not only in the UK, “but from South America to Sri Lanka and across much of Africa and the Middle East”.
“As a well-known campaigner and expert strategist, Boris Johnson personally asked him to organize his campaign to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in June 2019. This resulted in Boris becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,” it said. notification.
“Others he has advised range from former Speaker of the US House of Representatives Newt Gingrich in his successful campaign to win control of the US Congress to Nobel Peace Prize winner Lord David Trimble, on the peace process and the elections during it… Last year Mark spent considerable time on political campaigns in Lebanon and Iraq. He regularly acts as an advisor to a number of CEOs of large international businesses.”
If he gets a job at No 10, Fullbrook would be one of the most experienced political minds in the building. Others who could take top jobs include Ruth Porter, Truss’s joint campaign director, and Adam Jones, her communications director. David Canzini, a former deputy chief of staff who previously worked with Fullbrook, may be one of the few former Johnson-era advisers to stay on.
