Presenter hired Mishcon de Reya – who have acted for Hodge and other right-wingers – for ex-lover and ‘reputation management’
Disgraced TV presenter Philip Schofield, who has quit his ITV morning show job after revelations that he had an affair with a show employee he reportedly first met at school when the boy was just fifteen, hired law firm Mishcon de Reya to act for his lover and to help ‘manage’ the scandal, according to newspapers this weekend.
Schofield then held a call with Mishcon’s ‘head of reputation management’ to ‘manage press interest’ in the story – a call that was apparently unsuccessful, given the coverage this weekend.
Mishcon is also the firm with which Keir Starmer wanted to take an ‘ongoing consultancy job’ in 2017, but he was banned from doing so by then-party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Although Starmer’s spin-doctors attempted to claim he had decided for himself not to take the job, emails subsequently revealed that Starmer had been planning to take the job until Corbyn intervened.
Mishcon has also acted for right-wing MPs such as Luciana Berger, and Margaret Hodge when she faced disciplinary action by the party for smearing Corbyn, and for the right-wing ‘Jewish Labour Movement’ in its attempt to paint the party to the Equality and Human Rights Commission as ‘institutionally antisemitic’ – contrary to the usual right-wing and media narrative, the EHRC made no such finding.
The firm featured in the Pandora Papers, as reported last year by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists:
Mishcon de Reya has advised Russians through a VIP Russia service that includes “reputation protection,” wealth structuring and asset protection. (The firm marketed the initiative on a webpage that has been removed “because we considered it to be distasteful given the current geo-political situation,” the spokeswoman said.) The Pandora Papers show, for example, that a Mishcon de Reya lawyer helped Russian politician Alexei Chepa use a company in the British Virgin Islands to acquire a 10-bedroom mansion in Holland Park, London, in 2011.
In January [2020], U.K. regulators hit Mishcon de Reya with a record $315,000 fine for violating anti-money-laundering rules. The firm said the settlement did not involve Russian clients and was unrelated to the Russian state.
Mishcon’s Anthony Julius represented Ron Fraser in his unsuccessful attempt to sue the UCU over the union’s pro-Palestinian stance on BDS (the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ campaign against illegal Israeli settlements).
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