Labour thinktank close to Morgan McSweeney paid firm to investigate journalists
A thinktank previously run by a Labour minister and the prime minister’s chief of staff paid a PR firm to investigate journalists who were looking into its funding, according to documents seen by the Guardian.Labour Together, once run by Morgan McSweeney and then by Josh Simons, now a Cabinet Office minister, hired APCO Worldwide to investigate journalists from the Guardian, the Sunday Times and other outlets and to identify their sources, documents suggest.A memo produced for Labour Together, first reported by the Substack publication Democracy For Sale, lists journalists who are viewed as “significant persons of interest” over articles about undeclared donations during McSweeney’s time at the thinktank.It adds: “It is important to identify the source of the information and to ascertain what additional information could be published.”McSweeney left Labour Together in 2020 when he joined Keir Starmer’s team.
He remained close to the thinktank, which was a key ally of Starmer as he led Labour to election victory in 2024.Simons was director of Labour Together when APCO was hired.Sources close to McSweeney said he had not taken the decision to hire APCO and it was a matter for Labour Together.The Guardian has approached Simons, Labour Together, the Labour party and APCO for comment.In response to the allegations, Labour MP John McDonnell called for his party to launch an inquiry into Labour Together and those in the party connected to it.
In a letter to Hollie Ridley, the party’s general secretary, on Friday, McDonnell called the investigation of journalists “truly shocking” and added: “If the reports of [Labour Together’s] activities in surveilling journalists are accurate it is clear that this organisation and its operators and controllers are bringing our party into disrepute.”The allegations come as McSweeney faces severe pressure over his role in Downing Street in the aftermath of new disclosures about Peter Mandelson in the Epstein files.Downing Street has rejected calls for his removal, but Labour backbenchers say his role in Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador makes his position as the prime minister’s most senior aide untenable.Documents seen by the Guardian suggest APCO was hired in 2023, when Simons ran Labour Together, after the Sunday Times had published an investigation into the organisation that alleged McSweeney had failed to declare more than £700,000 in donations to the thinktank between 2017 and 2020.The money is said to have paid for polling and campaigning that supported Starmer’s rise to the Labour leadership.
Labour Together was fined £14,250 in September 2021 over late reporting of £740,000 of donations after the organisation reported itself to the Electoral Commission for failures to declare the money in 2020.Internal reports prepared by APCO Worldwide for Labour Together name the Sunday Times journalists Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, as well as the Guardian’s Henry Dyer, Declassified’s John McEvoy and journalists from other outlets as subjects and discuss potential “leverage” over other reporters.Dyer broke the story of the Electoral Commission’s investigation into Labour Together in 2021.Democracy for Sale alleges that the thinktank paid the PR firm at least £30,000 to identify the source of stories about its funding.The briefings supplied to Labour Together by APCO claim that one possible source of the Sunday Times story was a Russian or Chinese hack of the Electoral Commission.
One of the documents says: “After a review of publicly available information, there appears to be two potential sources for the information about Labour Together’s funding that appeared in the Times article: a leak from someone within the Electoral Commission or Labour Together to the author; or illegally gathered information collected from the 2023 hack of the Electoral Commission that has been passed on to the author.”Another report by APCO for Labour Together is reportedly titled: “Executive summary: investigation into Shadow World Investigations,” which is a a London-based investigative outlet run by the South African journalists Paul Holden and Andrew Feinstein.Holden collaborated on the Sunday Times story about Labour Together’s finances.
Home Office says nearly 60,000 people deported from UK or left voluntarily since 2024 election
Nearly 60,000 unauthorised migrants and convicted criminals have been removed or deported from the UK since Labour took office, the Home Office has said.The announcement came amid claims that the government was promoting “harmful stereotypes” by equating migration with criminality.Officials said the figure was the highest number in a decade.The department said 15,200 people who were in the UK illegally were removed since the 2024 election – a 45% increase on the previous 19 months.A statement said 43,000 people left voluntarily after being told they were in the UK illegally
No 10 defies calls to sack Morgan McSweeney over Mandelson appointment
Downing Street has defied calls to remove Keir Starmer’s most senior aide, insisting Morgan McSweeney retains the prime minister’s confidence, as frustration grows over a wait for documents on Peter Mandelson, which some fear could last for weeks.Amid warnings from Labour backbenchers that McSweeney’s survival would leave Starmer’s position “untenable”, Starmer apologised to victims of Jeffrey Epstein for appointing Mandelson, a close friend of the convicted child sex offender, as US ambassador.A day after a chaotic Commons deal to release vetting papers over Mandelson’s appointment left many Labour MPs mutinous, there was still fury about the role of McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff.One Labour MP said: “People want [McSweeney] to go, more than ever before. The current situation is unsustainable
How the Epstein scandal has shaken the British government to its core
It was the one scandal that Donald Trump seemed unable to shake. No matter his best efforts to convince his supporter base that there was nothing to see here, the demands for the administration to release every document it had on the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein only grew.Yet even after the most shocking revelations in the latest drop about Trump’s inner circle – involving everyone from Elon Musk to the Maga honcho Steve Bannon to the commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, not to mention Trump himself – so far, it seems, the administration has escaped largely unscathed. Nobody has resigned, nobody has been fired, and certainly there is no sign that the US president is going anywhere.There is, however, one political establishment that the Epstein scandal has shaken to its core – in the UK, where revelations in the files have sent a shock wave through the governing party that threatens to topple it entirely
Calls to halt UK Palantir contracts grow amid ‘lack of transparency’ over deals
Labour should halt public contracts with the US tech company Palantir, opposition politicians have said, amid growing concern at the lack of government transparency over dealings with the company and Peter Mandelson.Since 2023, Palantir has secured more than £500m in contracts with the NHS and the Ministry of Defence (MoD), while it employed Global Counsel, the lobbying firm founded by Mandelson. Emails released by the US Department of Justice show Mandelson sought help from Jeffrey Epstein to find “rich individuals” as clients.The government has for months blocked attempts by MPs and campaigners to scrutinise Palantir’s deals. Requests for information about meetings between the company’s leadership with Keir Starmer and the former prime minister Boris Johnson were among those that have been refused
‘If someone had pulled the trigger’: MPs rue lack of challenger to oust Starmer
The most dangerous moment of Keir Starmer’s premiership came just after lunchtime on Wednesday, when mutiny was the talk of the Commons tea room.Anger is widespread across Labour – but it was at its most palpable among the party’s new MPs, as the Conservatives used a humble address to force the disclosure of the vetting documents and communications linked to Peter Mandelson, disgraced by his close association with Jeffrey Epstein.“At about 2pm yesterday, if someone had pulled the trigger, we would have moved,” one 2024 intake MP said on Thursday. “No one dared. I think that says a lot
Lord Triesman obituary
The wide-ranging diversity of the employment and pursuits in the packed public life of David Triesman, Lord Triesman, who has died aged 82, was fuelled by a visionary idealism he first displayed as a teenage schoolboy and which he thereafter sustained throughout a rollercoaster ride in sport, business and politics.He began his working life as an academic, spent nearly two decades as a trade union leader, ran the Labour party as general secretary for two years in the troubled run-up to the Iraq war from 200103 and then became a government minister in the House of Lords. A qualified senior football referee who had played for Tottenham Hotspur’s youth team in the 1960s, he served as chair of the Football Association from 2008 to 2010. He remained an active member of the Lords and numerous public bodies, and in 2011 founded his own consultancy dealing in property and private equity.In a letter he wrote from Labour’s headquarters as general secretary in 2003, he sought to re-engage the political commitment of disaffected party members, after the early shine of the Blair government was dimmed with disillusion, by defining his own lifelong fervour for a fairer world
‘One of the most stunning sights in the country’: your picks for UK town of culture
‘It’s an opportunity for bonding’ – my quest to become a Black dad who can do his daughters’ hair
Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘We are now at the women-should-smile-more stage of his presidency’
The Guide #228: Against my better judgment, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has me back in Westeros
Randa Abdel-Fattah and Louise Adler to headline alternative to cancelled Adelaide writers’ week
Jon Stewart on Epstein files: ‘I’m just not sure anybody is going to be held accountable’