Gabriel Pogrund

Gabriel has broken a string of stories across politics, policing and finance which have changed perceptions, share prices and government policy.

First: the scoops which sparked the first political crisis of Keir Starmer’s administration - and a national conversation about the relationship between money and politics. The revelations that the PM’s biggest personal donor Lord Alli had a government pass, and had funded his wife’s clothing, had instant impact. They dominated the front pages of every newspaper and broadcast news, and were quickly followed by other disclosures about Alli’s influence over appointments, his largesse and the conduct of other ministers. Yet the impact went deeper still. Before long, Gabriel’s reporting had exposed a gulf between the public and political class as to what is acceptable - one which the prime minister, who had vowed to “clean up” politics, and a striking number of his cabinet colleagues failed at first to appreciate. It also persuaded the government to change the rules on ministerial gifts and hospitality; forced the PM, deputy PM and the chancellor to commit to change their own conduct; and led Starmer to repay thousands in donations he knew he could no longer justify.

Second: Gabriel’s reporting on the police’s failed investigation into the death of Zac Brettler. Based on an accidentally leaked spreadsheet of a rental car’s GPS data and months of data journalism, he offered a minute by minute account of the events leading up to the teenager’s demise - demonstrating not only that Scotland Yard had failed to understand what had happened that night, but that one of the prime suspected had brazenly and repeatedly lied.

And finally: the disclosure that Boris Johnson secretly flew to Venezuela to meet Nicholas Maduro - all to lobby for a rapprochement with the West which (Gabriel later revealed) would have benefited the hedge fund which secretly paid for the trip and which held hundreds of millions in the country’s sovereign debt.

Alongside stories on a Tory donor accused of human trafficking to the king’s appointment of a homoeopathic doctor to the royal household, we hope Gabriel’s dogged reporting is worthy of the prize.