Siobhain McDonagh says peer was ‘best friends’ with terminally ill sibling Margaret, Labour’s first female general secretary
A Labour MP accepted a £1.2 million loan from Lord Alli to buy a house.
Siobhain McDonagh, the MP for Mitcham and Morden, said the Labour peer helped her buy the house for her terminally ill sister Baroness McDonagh, Labour’s first female general secretary, who was the donor’s “best friend” for 25 years.
Described as a “tour de force” for the party, Lady McDonagh was credited with helping Labour achieve its landslide election victory in 1997.
She was diagnosed with a brain tumour after suffering from a series of fits in November 2021 and died last year.
It is understood that the house paid for with the £1.2 million loan is in south-west London.
Siobhain and Lady McDonagh were born and brought up in the area and bought a house there together in the 1990s, where they had lived for almost 25 years when Lady McDonagh fell ill in 2021.
As her sister’s health deteriorated, Ms McDonagh tried to make various accommodations, including by installing a stairlift.
But when things became too difficult to manage, Lord Alli lent her the money to buy another house nearby so Lady McDonagh could have a downstairs bedroom and bathroom.
The MP said she was “really aware of just how fortunate I am to have a friend like Waheed”, adding that there was “nothing but love and kindness here”.
Ms McDonagh is still living in the second property, with the intention of repaying Lord Alli with the sale of the home she bought with her sister in the 1990s.
Ms McDonagh said that Lord Alli wanted “nothing other” than for her sister to be comfortable in the last months of her life.
The “interest-free loan”, received in March 2023, was declared in the MPs’ register of interests at a value of £1.2 million.
The entry stated that it was being used to facilitate a move to a property with “complete ground floor access” for a member of Ms McDonagh’s family.
Ms McDonagh said she had not yet repaid the loan because probate was yet to be completed.
She explained the circumstances behind the loan after it was suggested on social media that Lord Alli had donated the money to put her “in his debt”. On X, formerly Twitter, she wrote:
She added: “The loan will be repaid on gaining probate on Margaret’s estate. It has been properly registered and Waheed wanted nothing other than his best friend being comfortable in the last months of her life.”
Challenged on what she had done for Lord Alli in return, Ms McDonagh wrote: “What can you give someone who has £200 million and who has been a Labour Member of Parliament for 25 years?
“I can’t tell the amount of work it used to take for Margaret to choose him a birthday present.”
Lord Alli, a major Labour donor, has given £947,032 to the party and its candidates since 2004.
After working in the background of politics for decades, he was thrust into the spotlight last month after it emerged he had been given a Downing Street pass.
The row escalated when further reports revealed Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, initially failed to declare money towards clothing he received from the Labour peer.
More details of his influence have followed, with The Telegraph revealing last week that Lord Alli funded at least seven Cabinet ministers in a campaign to reshape the Labour Party spanning multiple years.
The donations suggest he backed candidates running against Jeremy Corbyn during the hard-Left’s time in control of the party, before ramping up donations under Sir Keir’s leadership.
The Prime Minister and Angela Rayner, his deputy, top the list, taking £155,122 and £72,450 respectively from the peer in benefits and cash donations, records show.
Other beneficiaries include Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, who has been handed £14,600 by the media entrepreneur since 2021, as well as Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, who was given £10,000 last year.
There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing by the peer, but the row over “freebies” given to top Labour politicians overshadowed much of the party’s annual conference in Liverpool, which ended on Wednesday.
