In 2014, in London, Uber was on the rise. Two years after its launch, the company had nibbled away at the market for vehicles with drivers and traditional taxis without much political consequence. But in the spring, one of Uber’s emissaries brings bad news about Boris Johnson, the mayor of London. “Saw Boris. The dice are stacked against us”writes Jim Messina, a former adviser to Barack Obama. Sensitive to the reproaches of its competitors, according to which the company would act at the margins of the law, Boris Johnson then refused to meet Uber. In an internal message, an Uber lobbyist will even go so far as to say that the mayor of London allegedly claimed that he was “less politically damaging to be photographed alongside the leader of the Islamic State than Travis Kalanick”the CEO of Uber.
In the years that followed, Uber undertook a relentless lobbying campaign to prevent Boris Johnson from pushing through tougher rules. The extent of this effort is revealed by the “Uber Files”. The plan to try to influence the mayor was established in 2014: “We need to relay a more positive image of Uber to Boris, by people he trusts and respects. » The targets: Conservatives, advisers to the Prime Minister and the regulator, Transport for London (TfL), chaired by the Mayor of London.
“Uber Files”, an international investigation
“Uber Files” is an investigation based on thousands of internal Uber documents sent by an anonymous source to the British daily The Guardianand forwarded to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and 42 media partners, including The world.
Emails, presentations, meeting minutes… These 124,000 documents, dated from 2013 to 2017, offer a rare dive into the mysteries of a start-up which was then seeking to establish itself in cities around the world despite a regulatory context. unfavorable. They detail how Uber has used, in France as elsewhere, all the tricks of lobbying to try to change the law to its advantage.
The “Uber Files” also reveal how the Californian group, determined to impose itself by a fait accompli and, if necessary, by operating illegally, has implemented practices that voluntarily play with the limits of the law, or that may amount to judicial obstruction of the investigations of which he was the subject.
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To do this, Uber uses high-level lobbyists, such as Rachel Whetstone, very close to David Cameron, Prime Minister at the time, and George Osborne, then Minister of Finance. “Boris Johnson was on the side of traditional taxis, it was no secret. And he controlled TfL: we needed the central government, in this case David and George, to influence him.recalls a former lobbyist for the American company.
Strategic dinner in Silicon Valley
In the summer of 2014, taxi drivers crippled the British capital, accusing Uber of being outlawed. Rachel Whetstone, then director of public affairs at Google, one of Uber’s main investors, suggested to Mr Kalanick a strategy to curry favor with the British political establishment. She also invites him to a dinner that she organizes in Silicon Valley and of which George Osborne is one of the main guests. “Knowing George is solving half the problem on the government side”she wrote to Travis Kalanick, in September 2014. Soon after, Mr. Kalanick poached Mme Whetstone to make her director of communications and public affairs.
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