Derek Draper, a former English lobbyist, served as a political advisor during the “Lobbygate” affair in 1998 and the 2009 scandal while Draper served as editor of the LabourList website. Additionally, he has written a book about contemporary treatment and worked as a psychotherapist. Here are a few intriguing titbits about the person!
1. Education & interest in politics: Derek Draper
Draper was born in Chorley, Lancashire, and attended Southlands High School till 1984. He afterwards started attending Leyland’s Runshaw College and the University of Manchester.
Draper hosted Ken Livingstone at the university after he missed his train due to a Labour Club meeting. Former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone was reportedly taken aback when he discovered an oversized poster of Labour Party deputy leader Roy Hattersley in Draper’s student room.
This is when he first met Charlotte Raven, the woman he would later fall in love with. She was a Labour Club activist at this university in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and she was associated with a successful campaign to oust then-student union communications officer Derek Draper.
2. Career Started: Derek Draper
The veteran political adviser began his political career in 1990 as Nick Brown’s constituency secretary. Draper left this job in 1992 to work as a researcher for Hartlepool MP Peter Mandelson. Four years later, he was hired by GPC Market Access as a director, where he remained until the beginning of 1999.
Derek co-founded the New Labour organisation Progress with Liam Byrne while he was working at GPC Market Access.
The former English lobbyist worked as the Modern Review’s political editor in the late 1990s. He also briefly wrote a column for the Daily Express and hosted Talk Radio UK.
3. “Lobbygate” scandal: Derek Draper
Derek Draper was caught on tape in 1998, while still employed as a director at GPC Market Access, boasting to Greg Palast – who was an undercover reporter from The Observer presenting as a businessman – regarding how they could provide and sell access to cabinet members and establish tax benefits for their clients.
When the scandal became public, it was dubbed “Lobbygate” by the tabloids.
“Draper was nothing more than a messenger boy, a factotum, a purveyor, a self-loving, over-scented clerk,” writes Palast. Despite his denials and accusations that The Observer was trying to trap him, he was widely mocked in the aftermath.
The actual issue, according to Palast, was about Tony Blair and his inner circle, not boastful lobbyists, as the ensuing media coverage had reported, he later said.
Draper was sacked from his position at the Daily Express as a result of his role in the “Lobbygate” incident, and insiders in the Labour party avoided him in general. Peter Mandelson, one of his friends, claimed that Draper “has a fine intelligence, but sometimes I am afraid he misuses that intelligence. He gets above himself. But now he has been cut down to size and I think probably he will learn a very hard lesson from what has happened.”
4. Psychotherapist: Derek Draper
The former English lobbyist returned to become a psychotherapist after leaving politics, spending “three years in Berkeley, California,” as he put it, to earn an MA in clinical psychology. He claimed to have been “the development director of a community counselling centre” while he was in Berkeley. Subsequently, he claimed to have started “a private practise in Marylebone, London.”
Later, the British politician clarified that he had actually received his education from the Wright Institute of California, a postgraduate institution established by Nevitt Sanford in Berkeley.
The veteran political adviser reacted to the controversy involving his alleged psychotherapy degree by denying the allegations. In 2009, he mentioned that he was considering filing a lawsuit against them.
Derek Draper is a British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy member (BACP) now.
As a journalist, he contributes an occasional article on psychotherapy problems for the Mail on Sunday, as well as monthly columns to the magazines Psychologies and Therapy Today.
The British politician also contributed a chapter to The Future of the NHS.
5. Two books written by: Derek Draper
Blair’s 100 Days:
Written by a former Chief Adviser to Peter Mandelson, this is an insider’s account of Blair’s first 100 days as Prime Minister, based on access to all levels of the Labour Party. Senior politicians, their advisers, and political hangers-on are among the cast of characters.
Life Support:
Every day, thousands of people benefit from psychotherapy: they are happier, more successful, and have better relationships. But not everybody can or wants to go to therapy. Derek Draper, a well-known psychotherapist, has chosen to provide his tips and tools from the therapy room in order to assist those individuals.
6. Coma from COVID 19: Derek Draper
Derek Draper was admitted to an intensive care unit in March 2020 after being diagnosed with COVID-19. After ten weeks, the British politician was still in critical condition and was put in an induced coma.
The next month, he opened his eyes, but remained in critical condition in the hospital, so the veteran lobbyist spent the rest of the year in the hospital.
In April 2021, Draper came back home on a temporary basis.
His wife Kate Garraway provided an update on her husband in May 2021, declaring that he is saddened by Covid-19 and still unable to move.
The Good Morning Britain host was forced to renovate her London home to accommodate Derek’s new complex necessities, including converting the basement office into a bedroom and converting the bathroom into a wet room.
7. What brought Derek Draper and Kate Garraway together?
Draper and Garraway first connected in 2004 through a mutual acquaintance and GMTV political editor, Gloria De Piero, who would subsequently become a Labour MP herself.
The next year, in Camden, north London, the pair was hitched. They have two kids.
