While the quality of the management of the Labour Party by its General Secretary David Evans remains hotly disputed among those on the left, the public relations consultancy he established just more than 20 years ago, The Campaign Company, looks to be in deep trouble.

Not so good Evans: the Labour Party’s General Secretary

The Campaign Company – motto: “Values First” (we don’t think it’s meant ironically) – has been threatened with being struck off the register of firms at Companies House for failing to keep their financial records up to date.

Under Evans, The Campaign Company, based in Suffolk House on George Street, flourished for a few, brief years soon after his mate, Tony Newman, and Alison Butler, Evans’ ex-lover, took control of Croydon Council following the 2014 local elections. Evans, an election adviser to Tony Bliar in 1997 and 2001, had a key part in Croydon Labour’s successful 2014 campaign.

Between 2014 and 2018, Evans’ The Campaign Company was handed contracts from Labour-controlled Croydon Council worth more than £200,000. If you asked anyone at Croydon Council what TCC actually did for all that money, they’d be hard-pressed to say.

The Campaign Company was also used for a spell by the council-owned housing company, Brick by Brick.

But according to the company’s most recent published accounts, for the year ending December 31, 2020, The Campaign Company is more than £100,000 in the red. Those accounts also suggest that TCC’s business in 2020 more than halved when compared to its trading in 2019.

No doubt, this was to some extent the impact of covid.

But it might also reflect the loss of all that cushty work from his mates at Croydon Town Hall. There’s certainly not any chance of much work coming TCC’s way since Evans’s mates bankrupted the borough.

Trouble and strife: the company founded by David Evans is behind with its paperwork

Evans was appointed as the Labour Party’s General Secretary in May 2020. A month later, Evans’s appointment as director of The Campaign Company was, quite properly, terminated. According to Companies House records, on the same day, Ms Aline Evans was appointed as the company secretary and appointed as a director.

At the same time, David Evans, now the most senior employee of the Labour Party, ceased being listed as a “person with significant control” at The Campaign Company. He was replaced as a “person with significant control” by his wife, Aline Evans.

All quite proper and above board. And still the Evanses’ family firm.

Significant control: Aline Evans, nee Delawa

For some in the Labour Party, Aline Evans might be better remembered as Aline Delawa. For two years, from 2001, at a time when David Evans was the party’s assistant general secretary, Aline Delawa was Labour’s “head of compliance”, making her “responsible for ensuring candidate selections and elections at local, London, Westminster and European levels were conducted in line with the party’s rules and the law”.

Her duties also included, “Custodian of the party’s rules and decision-making processes (including Annual Conference).”

Seems that these days, Aline Evans is having trouble with compliance when it comes to company law.

Since Aline Evans appeared to assume control of The Campaign Company from her husband, the business has moved to virtual working, ending its lease on its Croydon office last year and registering itself at an accommodation address on City Road.

But in more than three years, it has only submitted one set of annual accounts.

Last Tuesday, the Registrar of Companies gave notice that, unless cause is shown to the contrary, The Campaign Company will be struck off and dissolved no later than April 28.

Which would be very bad news for the various Labour Party figures who have made their living carrying out all those surveys and consultations for TCC. That included, from 2017 until June last year (basically most of the time he was a member of Tony Newman’s council cabinet), Ollie “Shit Show” Lewis, who proved to be so unpopular among local party members that he failed to be selected as a candidate in any ward for the 2022 local elections.

Others to have worked at TCC include former Sutton councillor Charlie Mansell and Peter Lamb, the former council leader in Crawley who was Labour’s parliamentary candidate in the town at the 2019 General Election, and Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign director who once again works under David Evans, now as Labour’s campaign director.

The threat of TCC being struck off is all a routine administrative process which, no doubt, will be resolved by the Evanses in due course. But it is hardly a sign of a well-run, thriving business. Nor is it a sign of the organisational wizards which TCC would like us to believe they are.

Read more: #TheLabourFiles: Source of hacked data had worked for Evans
Read more: Council deputy Butler fails to declare company directorship
Read more: ‘No records’ after council hired Starmer ally to advise leader
Read more: Brick by Brick hires firm which has Butler’s son on staff

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