Ronnie : Cameron Backs Entrepreneurs & Social Investment

Gordon will have bitten his nails to the quick after reading the Guardian this morning. Ronnie Cohen praises Cameron and criticises government policy - this from the man who has in the past given Labour £1.8m.

Asked what has gone wrong for Gordon, he is quoted as saying "All of a sudden what looked like a one-horse race is now a two-horse race."

How does Ronnie feel about David Cameron becoming the next PM? "I am a businessman who supports a political party for two reasons: whether it supports entrepreneurship and social investment. If you said to me today, am I concerned about the possibility that a Conservative government would come back in and overturn the entrepreneurial system that we've worked so hard to do or seriously break the growth of social investment, I'd say no." So Ronnie is now a swing voter.

Ronnie, who founded venture capitalists Apax Partners, doesn't think much of Darling's back-of-an-envelope plan to hike capital gains taxes 80% "Entrepreneurs need to recruit executives who know how to run a business. They're on big salaries with big companies that offer pensions. A 10% rate enables someone with a big income to take a chance and work with an entrepreneur." So will he actually be voting Labour this time?

Lord Offshore

Lord Laidlaw may have good reasons why he has not returned to the UK as he promised when he was put up for a peerage. The food is much nicer in Monaco after all and he may need to work on his tan.

Nevertheless, if he is going to honour his promise he should get a move on. If the retired billionaire can't be bothered to come back he should never have been put up for a peerage.

Robert Peston broke the story. Guido wonders if he got the tip from the Labour peer, Baron Peston?

Guido will be reporting soon on one of Gordon's favourite businessman and his use of Cayman Islands offshore vehicles. Gordon likes him so much he even backed him for a peerage....

Crick is on the Venture Capitalist's Case Tonight

Tonight he is taking a look at Ronnie Cohen's generosity. Crick is brilliant isn't he, where does he get his story ideas?

Incidentally, talk is that Newsnight are going to try out a hot, hungry, new investigative reporter soon...

The Labour Capital Party

The GMB's anti-private equity campaign against venture capitalism is gaining traction as anger over job losses at the AA and Birds Eye spreads across the unions.

Venture capitalist, Ronnie "PFI" Cohen, Gordon's moneybags backer, has a direct debit paying the equivalent of £20,000 a month to the Labour party. Nigel Doughty and Jonathan Aisbitt are another couple of red blooded capitalists happy to chip in a quarter of a million a year to the party formerly known as the worker's party. Peter Hain said he wanted City slickers to give up their bonuses, but this week he doesn't mind them giving their bonuses to the Labour party. He who pays the piper calls the tunes.

Last week Hain wanted City slickers to give their bonuses to "charity or invest it in regeneration schemes for unemployed kids". Now he says "private equity funds provide a very good vehicle for start-ups, for rescue operations and for investment to grow" - which they do - with a tapered relief 10% tax rate on liquidation and tax deductible debt costs to offset against profits. Gordon of course ultimately makes the rules, is he going to side with his millionaire backers, or the workers?

Unions to Gordon : End Ronnie's Tax Breaks

Ronnie "PFI" Cohen is Gordon's moneybags backer. His Apax Partners is Britain's biggest Private Equity finance house. The Private Equity sector is one of the hottest areas of profitability in the City and demonstrates the continuing adaptability of capitalism. Apax does the traditional sweat or strip the assets plays of financial engineers of yore and is also a "stakeholder" in New Labour's PFI deals. Apax, through various subsidaries, is a huge "stakeholder" with multi-billion exposure to Gordon's off-the-balance-sheet PSBR dodge.

The unions don't buy into the "stakeholders" and Public Private Partnership (PPP) language of New Labour, they see it as old fashioned profiteering by the private sector vultures of venture capitalism at the expense of the workers. The GMB is calling for 100% windfall taxes and an end to tax relief on debt financed Private Equity deals. So who will Gordon listen to, the unions who oppose him or the PFI-profiteering venture capitalist who backs him?

Don't hold your breath, it was after all Gordon who secured Ronnie his knighthood and later tried to get him a peerage...

C4 Tonight : Gordon "Cash for Honours"

Guido has just been tipped that C4 News is going to do a "Gordon in Cash for Honours" story tonight.

Co-conspirators and readers of this blog will have heard about Ronnie Cohen months ago.

Tomorrow :

Guido will be exposing evidence of how the Brownite Smith Institute's "Cash for Access" machine became a "Payments for Policy" racket - with Gordon Brown delivering the policy.

Guido will name the the donor the institute's director, Wilf Stevenson, told at a Smith Institute meeting "what you are going to say will have a great impact on the government's thinking" - two months before Gordon announced the policy change wanted.

Ronnie Cohen and Gordon

A useful source told Guido some time ago to watch Ronnie Cohen and his bankrolling of Gordon's ambitions. Whilst Ronnie Cohen is not in the same billionaire league as Lord Sainsbury he is heading towards being a demi-semi-billionaire. So he could give a mere tenth of his wealth and bail out the Labour party from debt - Lord Ronnie of Gordon's Gratitude?

Ronnie made his money through venture capitalists Apax Partners. Apax is one of Britain's leading buy-out firms and provides private equity funding for a huge number of PFI deals. The scale of Apax's capital raising is impressive, giving a few million to Gordon would only be fair, after all if it wasn't for PFI deals in the NHS and the like, Apax would be a lot less successful than it is today. Any donations to the Gordon for PM Campaign would be a small pay-back for all the millions he has made as a result of PFI. It would be rude not to give thanks.