Formerly running a think tank labor The minister and the prime minister’s chief of staff were allegedly paid by a PR firm to investigate journalists looking for funding.
Labor Together, once run by Morgan McSweeney and now Cabinet Office minister Josh Simons, commissioned APCO Worldwide to interrogate journalists from the Guardian, Sunday Times and other outlets and trace their sources. Substock publication Democracy for Sale.
McSweeney left Labor Together in 2020 when Keir Starmer joined the team. He is close to the thinktank, a key ally of Stormer when he leads Labor to an election victory in 2024. Simons was the director of Labor Together when APCO was hired.
Sources close to McSweeney say he has not made a decision to appoint APCO and it is a matter for Labor Together. The Guardian has contacted Simons, Labor Together, the Labor Party and APCO for comment. Simmons, McSweeney, Labor Together, the Labor Party and APCO all declined to comment on the record, Democracy for Sale reported.
The allegations come as McSweeney faces intense pressure over his role in Downing Street following new revelations about Peter Mandelson in the Epstein files. Downing Street rejected calls to sack him, but Labor backbenchers said his role in Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador made his position as the prime minister’s most senior aide untenable.
On Thursday night, Labor MP Kim Johnson About the allegations “McSweeney’s operation is completely rotten,” they suggested, adding, “If this is their leadership’s thinking, Number 10 needs a top-down gutting.”
According to the Democracy for Sale report, APCO was appointed in 2023 when Simons ran Labor Together. The Sunday Times McSweeney published an investigation into the firm that alleged it failed to declare more than £700,000 in donations to the thinktank between 2017 and 2020. It is said to have paid for polling and campaigning to support Stormer’s rise to the Labor leadership.
Labor Together was fined £14,250 The firm was reported to the Electoral Commission for failing to declare the money in 2020 after late reporting of £740,000 in donations in September 2021.
Democracy for Sale said internal reports produced by APCO Worldwide for Labor Together discussed “key reporters” from Sunday Times journalists Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke as well as the Guardian’s Henry Dyer, Declassified’s John McEvoy and other outlets. Dyer He broke the story Electoral Commission probe into Labor Together in 2021
The thinktank has alleged that Democracy for Sale paid a PR firm at least £30,000 to identify the source of stories about its funding.
Briefings provided to Labor Together by APCO suggest a possible source for the Sunday Times The story is a Russian or Chinese hack of the Election Commission, Democracy for Sale reports.
One of the reported documents states: “After reviewing publicly available information, there are two possible sources for the information about Labor Together’s funding that appeared in the Times article: a leak from someone at the Electoral Commission or a Labor Together writer; or illegally gathered information sent to the Electoral Commission from the 2023 hack.”
Another report and publication by APCO for Labor Together reportedly saw: “Executive Summary: An Inquiry into Shadow World Investigations,” a London-based investigative outlet run by South African journalists Paul Holden and Andrew Feinstein.
The memo seeks to discredit Holden, who contributed to a Sunday Times story about Labor Together’s finances.
