The Grenfell Tower fire came less than a week after the 2017 general election. Both events diminished then Prime Minister Theresa May’s political stature, her seemingly cold response to the horror at Grenfell following a robotic election campaign that culminated in a hung parliament. By the time of the first Grenfell anniversary, in an attempt to improve her image, May’s team had sought out a grassroots North Kensington media platform, offering them an exclusive interview with the PM. It has emerged that May’s Director of Communications, Robbie Gibb, apparently offered favours to the North Kensington outlet in return for a positive outcome for May. Gibb has gone on to hold an array of powerful roles, including with some of the most potent purveyors of anti-Palestinian Zionist propaganda.    

Gibb’s alleged offer of favours to the community-based media outlet was first reported by Mint Press News and has been confirmed to Urban Dandy by a source with direct knowledge of the conversations held between the platform and the May government. 

The Interview

The Grenfell interview was initiated by a civil servant at the Home Office who would later go on to take a senior position at Kensington & Chelsea Council. Al Manaar mosque in North Kensington was agreed as the location for the recording, and arrangements were made during a series of meetings that also included Katherine Sladden, a communications strategist who had been working with the survivors and bereaved campaign group, Grenfell United.

It was during these meetings that Sir Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s Director of Communications, apparently offered a quid pro quo, which was not taken up by the journalist.

We asked Robbie Gibb for comment on the incident, but have received no response from the former spin doctor, who holds several positions of considerable influence in British public life… 

Gibb

Robbie Gibb was Theresa May’s Director of Communications from 2017 to 2019. He has held a string of influential roles since, including being Editorial Adviser to GB News; Editor of live BBC political programmes and Deputy Editor of Newsnight; Senior Communications Adviser at Kekst CNC, the second largest public relations company in the world; Chair of the BBC’s Renumeration Committee; Chair of the BBC’s England Committee; member of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines & Standards Committee, and until August 2024, Gibb was Director and sole registered owner of The Jewish Chronicle (JC) newspaper having led a consortium that rescued the publication from liquidation in 2020.

During the years that Gibb directed Theresa May’s communications, Parliament’s weekly Prime Minister’s Questions often featured bitter ad hominem attacks by May on opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in which she would falsely claim that Labour had a problem with “antisemitism.” Such attacks during PMQs ceased almost completely when Boris Johnson replaced May and Gibb departed Number 10 in 2019.

Gibb’s involvement with The Jewish Chronicle has caused consternation in media circles. In 2020 Gibb became the sole registered owner of the weekly newspaper. In 2021 the JC was found to have breached the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s code of practice 33 times in three years. Despite this woeful record, Gibb has remained formally responsible for overseeing editorial standards at the BBC. Bizarrely, Gibb has been allowed to carry on in his various BBC roles even as The JC has launched fantastical campaigns against the corporation, claiming it has an “institutional” bias against Israel.

While Gibb was the sole officially registered owner of The JC, the identity of the real owner (or owners) has remained a secret and the JC recently registered as a charity governed by trustees, enabling the financers to remain concealed. The consortium fronted by Gibb that rescued The JC in 2020 and the board of trustees appointed this year both feature high-profile and outspoken supporters of Israel and its genocide of Palestinians. For more on this, see the notes at the end of this article. 

JC v JC

In 2020, outgoing JC boss Alan Jacobs thanked Gibb and the consortium that rescued the newspaper, saying, “Those donors can be proud that their combined generosity allowed the JC to survive long enough to help see off Jeremy Corbyn and friends, one of the greatest threats to British Jewry in the JC’s existence.”

Corbyn was and remains a committed anti-racist and advocate for peace. But Gibb, the spin doctor who sought to repair Teresa May’s reputation post-Grenfell, appears to have played a critical role in smearing Corbyn, who’s own response to the Grenfell fire was in marked contrast to May’s. As with all character assassinations, the method Gibb and others chose was to attack Corbyn’s strengths – humanity, loyalty, steadfastness – and portray them as weaknesses.  

Is Gibb Profiting From Grenfell-Israel Link?

An article in Prospect magazine this year identified the American billionaire Peter E Singer as the probable money man behind the JC buyout fronted by Gibb. Singer is the top shareholder at Arconic, manufacturer of the deadly cladding wrapped around Grenfell Tower. According to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry Phase Two Report, Arconic, both before and during Singer’s time at the helm “deliberately concealed” the danger of its products, using “dishonest strategies” in pursuit of profit.

Arconic is also the manufacturer of products for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter aircraft used by Israel for its ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

The origins of Gibb’s relationship with Singer are not clear, but is it possible that coordination between the two men started with Gibb’s apparent attempts at manipulating the media over the Grenfell Tower fire atrocity. If the speculation is correct, and Singer is the real owner of the Jewish Chronicle, then it is possible that Gibb took advantage of an opportunity presented in the aftermath of the fire at Grenfell Tower, forming a partnership with Singer to enrich himself, and in the process take over an news outlet where pro-Israel propaganda is the stock-in-trade.  

Sir Robbie Gibb unsurprisingly ignored our request for comment regarding Grenfell, and former Guardian Editor, Alan Rusbridger, a pillar of establishment media, reported that Gibb had “flatly ignored” all his questions related to The Jewish Chronicle. It seems that Gibb is not keen on transparency about how he uses, and possibly profits from, his positions of influence.  

by Tom Charles @UrbanDandyLDN @tomhcharles

 

*Notes – The Gibb-led consortium that saved the Jewish Chronicle was dominated by Zionist fanatics, including:

William Shawcross – founding member of the Friends of Israel Initiative; former director of the anti-Palestinian think tank the Henry Jackson Society, where he made allegedly Islamophobic remarks.

John Woodcock – aka Lord Walney; has taken Israel lobby funding during Gaza genocide.

John Ware – mainstream journalist who made an episode of Newsnight that was thinly veiled pro-Israel anti-Corbyn propaganda. Under Corbyn, Labour took Ware to court, but once legal advice had stated that Labour was set to win the case, Corbyn’s successor abandoned the case and Labour settled out of court, paying over half a million pounds to those involved in the highly dubious documentary.

Jonathan Sacerdoti – JC correspondent and zealous defender of Israel’s genocide. 

The JC’s trustees include:

Lord Austin – PM’s trade envoy to Israel who has supported the genocide in from the outset.

Rabbi Joseph Dweck – Zionist propagandist.