The UK Lobbying Ethics Crisis: What Recent Scandals Reveal About Reputational Risk in the Influence Industry

The past few weeks have exposed deep vulnerabilities within the lobbying and political communications sector. Two high-profile episodes – the collapse of Global Counsel and the reputational fallout surrounding APCO Worldwide – have raised fundamental questions about culture, judgement and the adequacy of self-regulation, triggering a UK lobbying ethics crisis. 

These cases reveal how quickly misjudgement can move the dial: a contained issue can become an existential crisis. Your reputation is your licence to operate, and once trust is compromised, the commercial consequences can follow rapidly. 

Global Counsel’s collapse: A case study in ethical drift

On the same day that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor celebrated his 66th birthday by welcoming six unmarked police cars to his new Norfolk home, Global Counsel, the lobbying firm founded by Lord Mandelson, quietly entered administration. 

The link between the two events was, of course, Jeffrey Epstein. His tentacle-like reach into the heart of the British establishment was so extensive that the Profumo affair pales in comparison. 

The lobbying firm that Mandelson co-founded with former political advisor Ben Wegg-Prosser faced an inevitable slide into the abyss following new revelations from FBI files. It emerged that Wegg-Prosser had met convicted sex offender Epstein at his New York home in 2010, whilst the disgraced financier was under house arrest, a meeting personally arranged by Mandelson. 

The meeting took place two years after Epstein’s conviction, suggesting a corporate culture that prioritised access to power and wealth regardless of the optics. 

There was an abortive attempt to save Global Counsel with an announcement that Mandelson, who had already quit the board in 2024, would fully divest his shares and Wegg-Prosser would resign from the company with immediate effect. The one-time Labour aide breezily described it as “a good old-fashioned political resignation”, believing that such extensive bloodletting would protect the reputation of the business. 

Yet less than a fortnight later, the company’s clients had run for the hills, the money dried up, and now 130 staff are out of a job. 

Global Counsel’s implosion demonstrates a hard truth. Reputational crises rarely erupt overnight, but they do reveal underlying cultural weaknesses. When clients perceive misjudgement as systemic rather than isolated, trust evaporates. In crisis terms, this turns a recoverable issue into an existential threat. 

APCO Worldwide and Labour Together: When due diligence looks like a smear

A separate scandal playing out across the news pages was unconnected to the Epstein scandal, but the implications are arguably more far-reaching. APCO Worldwide, a global advisory and advocacy firm, was paid £36,000 by the think tank Labour Together to investigate the background of Sunday Times journalists who had reported on allegations of financial impropriety. 

The investigation looked more like a smear than due diligence, and the repercussions are continuing. Josh Simons, who commissioned the investigation and is now a Cabinet Office minister, has been caught up in allegations that National Cyber Security Centre officials were urged to look into Sunday Times journalists and link them to pro-Russian networks. 

Simons has now been reported to the government’s ethics advisor; the Prime Minister has ordered a Cabinet Office investigation to establish the facts; and the Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) has separately opened its own review into the work carried out by APCO Worldwide. 

This begs the question: at what point does communication morph into something closer to political intimidation? The contract itself was explicit. APCO was paid to produce material that could “proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together.” That is a smear campaign under the guise of a communications contract. Which is what makes it precisely so damaging. 

This episode underscores how ambiguity of intent is itself a reputational risk. When communications work appears to target journalists, even if legally permissible, the narrative quickly shifts from “due diligence” to “political intimidation”. Perception becomes reality, and agencies are judged by the company they keep and the actions they enable. 

A pattern emerges in the UK lobbying ethics crisis

Both the collapse of Global Counsel and APCO Worldwide’s controversial work for Labour Together shine a harsh spotlight on the influence industry. Ethical guardrails failed in both instances, focusing attention on self-regulation and whether it is sufficient. 

Yet we have been here before, back in 2017, with the collapse of the lobbying firm Bell Pottinger following outrage over their South African campaign intended to promote the image of a business run by the influential Gupta family, which instead incited racial tensions. 

The Bell Pottinger precedent showed that market forces will punish firms faster and more harshly than regulators ever will. Global Counsel and APCO now reinforce that lesson. When ethical boundaries are blurred, the commercial fallout is swift, severe and often irreversible. 

Where does the influence industry go from here?

The political influence game is lucrative, and even controversial clients deserve representation. But where do we draw the line before others do it for us? Is voluntary self-regulation structurally capable of governing a sector that now routinely operates at the intersection of politics, intelligence and media? 

Outsourcing ethical standards to market forces and calling it regulation is not an option. The real test is simpler and older than any regulatory framework: who benefits from the work being done, and is that a sufficient justification for doing it? 

If the honest answer is the bottom line alone, then the events that triggered a UK lobbying ethics crisis are not bad luck. They are the inevitable consequence. 

For PR, lobbying and advisory firms, credibility is the product. Ethical ambiguity is more than a moral failing, leaking into a strategic business risk. Firms that confuse influence with impunity ultimately discover that the market, clients and public opinion form their own enforcement mechanism. 

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