The most powerful football team in the country is getting back together. Andy Burnham’s decision to appoint James Purnell as his chief of staff should he become prime minister will reunite not only two old friends and former Labour ministers but two of the linchpins of the famous Demon Eyes team set up in the late 1990s.
But even as the pair prepare to reprise their on-pitch roles – Burnham, a ‘fast attacker with good finishing’, and Purnell, ‘a decent centre-back … very, very dogged’ – the appointment has triggered unease within Labour over Purnell’s recent career. The former cabinet minister was until weeks ago chief executive of Flint Global, a registered lobbying firm that counted BP, Amazon, Apple, Jaguar Land Rover, Uber, Google, Microsoft, Glencore and Thames Water among its clients.
“Andy Burnham appoints James Purnell as chief of staff, reuniting Demon Eyes teammates but sparking row over Purnell's lobbying firm Flint Global's clients.”
Burnham, who has said Thames Water should be nationalised and public ownership of water companies is ‘absolutely an option’, now faces questions over why he picked a man whose firm advised the utility and its bondholders. One Labour MP described the appointment as a ‘very bad sign’.
Flint Global does not publish a full client list in the UK but its EU transparency register shows Apple paid it more than €1m in the last year for which data is available. The firm is majority owned by private equity firm Cinven and held through a Jersey-based holding company. Purnell had shares until recently but a Burnham team spokesperson said: ‘James has left Flint. He will have no ongoing financial interest in the company of any kind.’ Purnell has also given up access to Flint emails and systems.
The chief of staff role, invented on the fly and carrying no official job description, has proved pivotal for Downing Street tenures that saw a full parliamentary term – Tony Blair and David Cameron. Keir Starmer struggled with the position, appointing Sue Gray then sacking her, replacing her with Morgan McSweeney (who resigned over advice on the US ambassador choice), and finally putting Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson on an interim joint basis.
Purnell’s defenders point to his long friendship with Burnham – spanning about 30 years, including cabinet service under Gordon Brown – and his senior management experience outside politics. Patrick Hennessy, a former Labour adviser who captained a rival football team, recalled the Demon Eyes as ‘very, very competitive’. He said: ‘Those two were at the core … You knew when you were playing against them it was going to be a hard match – they were determined to win.’
The team, set up in 1998 by Purnell and Tim Allan (later Keir Starmer’s director of communications) and named after the Conservative attack poster depicting Tony Blair with devilish red eyes, featured players including Ed Balls and David Miliband. Now its key figures are poised to run the country – signalling how Labour’s modern history is still being written by those who first propelled it to power in 1997.