Labour Together: How McSweeney's shadowy think tank went to 'war' against journalists
Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons resigned last weekend following a scandal in which he reportedly paid a PR firm £36,000 ($48,000) to investigate journalists from The Sunday Times and other outlets looking into undeclared donations funding the think tank he headed, Labour Together.
His actions have sparked concerns amongst politicians, journalists and civil liberties campaigners about the use of intimidation tactics by those close to government to stifle press freedom.
Julie Posetti, chair of Centre for Journalism and Democracy at City St George’s, told Middle East Eye that the actions of Labour Together and the PR firm it worked with, "in effect represent a threat to media freedom in the UK”.
Nik Williams of Index on Censorship, an organisation campaigning for freedom of expression, said the attempts to surveil journalists are “deeply alarming” and “not a tactic that we should see in a democracy”.
“We are seeing across the globe a concerning backsliding in democratic standards,” Williams told MEE.
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He noted that journalists tend to be the “canary in the coal mine for that sort of decline in human rights and democracy… we should be worried about what could follow if there is not a line drawn in the sand.”
Labour Together, the think tank behind Keir Starmer’s campaign to take over from Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, counts a number of senior ministers amongst its members.
They include Starmer’s former chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who led the group between 2017 and 2020, and who resigned last month over his role in the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.
Mandelson, a former minister and until recently a powerful figure in Labour, was recently arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office following the fallout from the Epstein files.
The US government dump of files related to the powerful paedophile and political fixer revealed an intimate friendship between him and Mandelson.
During McSweeney’s leadership, the think tank was fined £14,250 by the Electoral Commission for failing to declare over £700,000 in political donations.
Their funders, whose donations were key in ensuring Starmer’s electoral success, included pro-Israel donor Trevor Chinn and hedge fund manager Martin Taylor.
The Times ran an investigation into this story in November 2023, written by journalists Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, based on information provided by investigative journalist Paul Holden, whose extensive research into the Labour group is now published in his book The Fraud.
Following its publication, Labour Together hired the American public affairs company APCO to look into the journalists and allegedly used the information to run a smear campaign falsely linking them to a Russian spy network.
Gemma Horton, from the research group Centre for the Freedom of the Media, told MEE that the lack of evidence surrounding these allegations is “very problematic as we should not be encouraging a culture of looking into journalists and intimidating them”.
Spokesperson from the human rights organisation Article 19, Barbora Bukovska, highlighted to MEE that “in democratic societies, political groups, regardless of affiliation, have a duty to uphold transparency and safeguard the independence of the media.”
“Efforts to conceal information of public interest or to attack journalists for doing their job are incompatible with those obligations.”
'Operation Cannon'
The APCO report, codenamed “Operation Cannon”, included claims about the faith, relationships and upbringing of Pogrund, one of the journalists involved in breaking the story.
Holden told MEE that the company used software to track down his address and partner’s identity, which had previously been kept private.
Simons then attempted to report him to the National Cybersecurity Centre (NCSC) in January 2024, which declined to investigate.
However, this did not stop Simons from briefing the press with smears about Holden.
In February 2024, Holden threatened legal action against The Guardian's political editor Pippa Crerar over a story the paper was planning to publish falsely claiming he was under investigation by the British security services for receiving information from a Russia-linked hack.
Crerar said she took the decision not to proceed with the allegation after verifying Holden's sources.
Writing about the episode on X, she wrote: "If a journalist is presented with an allegation it is their job in first instance to 1/ establish its veracity, usually by speaking to sources 2/ put the allegation to the individual concerned 3/ consider the motivation of the briefer. If the allegation doesn’t pass those tests, you don’t proceed to publication."
Holden called the allegations “totally insane” – especially given his past work exposing Russian arms dealing, which left him unable to travel east of Poland – and also false, given the NCSC had not pursued the investigation.
Nevertheless, The Times story on Labour Together's undisclosed funding was barely picked up by other outlets, suggesting the alleged “whispering campaign” to scare them away from reporting on it may have been successful.
The result for Holden was “people didn’t know who they were voting for… if [Labour] had been scrutinised and exposed before they came into power, then there would not be a massive crisis of public confidence in our democracy which is creating a space for the far-right to emerge.
“This is a political project which uses dishonesty, misdirection and deceptions as its key political mode of operation,” Holden said, by intentionally lying to the public, both during Starmer’s internal Labour Party campaign and in the 2024 general election.
'This is a political project which uses dishonesty, misdirection and deceptions as its key political mode of operation'
- Paul Holden, investigative journalist
Holden claimed the government which emerged from this project is “one of the most authoritarian governments this country has ever had” - not just “undemocratic” but “anti-democratic” and “hostile to the democratic process”.
He cited examples such as the digital ID scheme, which was Josh Simons’ prerogative; Cabinet minister Steve Reed postponing council elections; Justice Secretary David Lammy proposing to scrap jury trials; and then Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s proscription of Palestine Action – all of whom received donations from and are involved in Labour Together.
In particular, the Home Office used similar tactics against Palestine Action: hiring a PR firm linked to Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems to plant a story in the press that the group was funded by Iran.
Cooper also referred repeatedly to “secret evidence” to justify the proscription under terror legislation – evidence that would have been seen by the High Court, which nevertheless declared the ban unlawful.
Declassified UK journalist John McEvoy told MEE he was named in the dossier produced by APCO as a “significant person of interest” due to his reporting for The Canary.
His reporting first linked Labour Together to an “astroturf campaign” against the outlet “aimed at delegitimising the Corbyn movement”, citing McSweeney allegedly declaring to MPs: “Destroy the Canary before the Canary destroys us.”
His reporting linked figures like political strategist Imran Ahmed and McSweeney to a “Blue Labour” right-wing faction that attempted to sabotage Corbyn’s 2017 election campaign and destroy the Labour left.
Labour MP Clive Lewis told MEE that the “top-down, rigid, anti-democratic, smear culture” propagated by this wing of the party now in power began with attacks on left-wing figures and media, and has now continued in government.
Clive Lewis MP has criticised the UK government’s contract with US defence technology company Palantir following revelations that it was secured through a lobbying firm owned by Peter Mandelson, who may have facilitated the deal through his own personal interests. pic.twitter.com/ebIw18RM5X
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) February 13, 2026
According to Lewis, the reduction in internal party democracy, opposition to journalistic scrutiny and transparency, and highly factional political culture from the outset made their behaviour in government a “logical inevitability” rather than a complete surprise.
For Lewis, this issue is “structural rather than a few bad apples” and is baked into Labour Together’s ideology – to crush the left-wing of the party and dupe members into voting in a “Trojan Horse for the Labour right”.
The faction has now opened up the party for business as a “corporate lobbyist’s dream”, rubbing shoulders with gambling companies, weapons manufacturers and surveillance tech firms like Palantir.
Labour Together were desperate to hide their donations because they needed to masquerade as a “workers’ party” in order to oppose the Tories and win support among Labour members and the wider public, according to Lewis.
Cabinet Office investigating the Cabinet Office
Susan Coughtrie, executive director of the human rights think tank Foreign Policy Centre, called the revelations “shocking” and “deeply disturbing”, warning they could have a “chilling effect” on journalists and urging a full, transparent investigation.
Democracy for Sale, which broke this story, reported that Labour Together and its directors donated over £150,000 to Cabinet Office ministers supposed to be investigating Simons, who also sat in the Cabinet Office prior to his resignation.
In an accidental WhatsApp message sent to Labour MPs, Simons appeared to refer to the chief whip and the independent adviser on ministerial standards familiarly as “Jonny” and “Laurie”, claiming the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team would “find I had not broken the code”.
'The scope of the work carried out by APCO, commissioned by the then director of Labour Together, was indefensible'
- Baroness Sally Morgan, Chair of Labour Together
This raises concerns about the inquiry’s integrity – not only was Simons apparently informed before it concluded, but, as Holden told MEE, it cannot be concluded because Holden has not been asked to give evidence, despite asking for the opportunity to do so. Nevertheless, Simons has been cleared of breaching the ministerial code.
Lewis said this was “marking your own homework”, and is among two dozen Labour MPs calling for an independent investigation.
The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has also raised a motion and released a statement demanding “proper scrutiny and full transparency” into the claims, as well as “stronger legislation to prevent corporate actors from targeting journalists and their sources.
“The idea that organisations could be contracted to smear journalists and stymie reporting is an affront to press freedoms and democracy,” the NUJ stated.
While Simons and McSweeney have both now resigned, neither faced any disciplinary action, and those involved in Labour Together remain in key governmental positions, including Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
In a statement, Baroness Sally Morgan, chair of Labour Together, said: "The scope of the work carried out by APCO, commissioned by the then director of Labour Together, was indefensible.
"The board was not shown the contract with APCO. Nor was the APCO report shared with the board."
She added that since she took up the position in September 2024, the think tank had made several changes to its governance structure.
"Much has already changed, including establishing an Audit & Risk committee, a whistleblower policy and fostering a more open and accountable culture. But we must do more."
MPs Josh Simons, Steve Reed, Imran Ahmed were contacted for comment but did not respond.
MEE also contacted Morgan McSweeney for comment but also did not get a response.
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