Following Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s recent green foreign policy lecture, the Government appointed a new “climate envoy”, Rachel Kyte. Kyte has occupied a number of positions in the climate wonkosphere: Professor of Politics at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University; Special Representative on Sustainable Energy to UN Secretary-General António Guterres; and a Vice-President of the World Bank. But controversy emerged when it was revealed that Kyte also sits on the advisory board of the Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF) – the philanthropic arm of the AI-powered Quadrature hedge fund. Quadrature had investments in fossil fuels, the Guardian had revealed. And the London-based but Cayman Islands-tax sheltered firm made a whopping £4 million donation to the Labour party, the Telegraph later revealed.
The conspiracy theory doing the rounds, then, is that fossil fuel interests have lobbied Labour to get their woman into a position to influence the Government’s climate policy. On X, buttonhole reporter Michael Crick explained that Kyte is “linked to Quadrature hedge fund based in the Cayman Islands which invests in fossil fuel firms”. Quoting Crick, like some wide game of Chinese Whispers, Owen Jones told his followers that, “Labour got a £4m donations from a hedge fund linked to fossil fuels in the Cayman Islands.” The Soros-funded OpenDemocracy outfit also complained about the party’s new donor: “Labour given £4m from tax haven-based hedge fund with shares in oil and arms.” Socialist Worker’s headline was: “Fossil fuel investors in tax havens fund Starmer.” The National – Scotland’s independence newspaper – focused on the link between Quadrature and Kyte and ran the story on the front page:
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