Politicians across the spectrum called for the minister to be sacked following a Guardian report alleging journalists had links to Russian intelligence.
Josh Simons, who ran Labor Together at the time, made their comments after an investigation found journalists wrongly concluded that they had obtained information about the thinktank from a Russian hack.
The revelations have increased pressure on Cabinet Office minister Simon, who is already under a departmental ethics investigation, and prompted calls from several politicians for him to be sacked or resign.
Kevin Hollinrake, chair of the Conservative Party, said Simons should be suspended from office and an independent inquiry should be held: “The Cabinet Office cannot be left to figure out its own homework.”
Hollinrake said the need to act was acute because Simons as a junior minister had a “ministerial responsibility for investigations and whistle-blowing across government” at a time when questions were being raised about his conduct.
Labor backbencher Jon Trickett says Simons should be sacked by Keir Starmer. “This reprehensible behavior is reminiscent of the dirty tricks used by the Richard Nixon White House during the Watergate scandal. It represents serious misconduct.”
Lisa Smart, a spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrats’ Cabinet Office, said Simons should examine his stance. “We are told this government will be cleaner than clean,” she said. “Instead, we’re stuck with cabinet ministers whose previous spin tactics were literally reporting journalists to intelligence agencies.”
Emails written by Simons and a GCHQ unit under the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) in January and February 2024 show he pressured authorities to investigate journalists. He told authorities a journalist was “living it up” with the daughter of a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. He noted that the former adviser was “suspected of having links to Russian intelligence.”
Simons hoped the security agency would investigate the sourcing behind the story in the Sunday Times about LabourTogether’s failure to disclose political donations. But despite the allegations, the information was not obtained through a hack and Russian involvement does not exist.
One person named in emails sent to the Labor Together NCSC accused the minister of orchestrating a “McCarthyite smear” campaign, while a second said the false accusation was “disturbing, creepy and disgusting”.
It was revealed earlier this month that Simons had hired Opco, an American public affairs agency, to investigate two Sunday Times journalists and the sources of an article published in 2023 criticizing Labor Together.
The story revealed the latest details of an undisclosed £730,000 donation to Labor Together by Starmer’s former chief adviser Morgan McSweeney at the time. A thinktank has been fined more than £14,000 by the Electoral Commission for failing to declare donations.
After Apco completed its report, Simons confirmed the information came from a hack of the Electoral Commission and told the NCSC in early 2024 that “our evidence” showed it was “promoted to people known to be working in a pro-Kremlin propaganda network with links to Russian intelligence.”
At Simons’ behest, his chief of staff at Labor Together told security officials that “we believe the Russian state or proxies of the Russian state are the likely culprit, as information has been transmitted to pro-Russian journalists linked to other ‘hack and leak’ operations”.
However, freelance journalist Paul Holden, who provided documents to the Sunday Times for their original report, recently showed his sources to the Guardian. They suggest the story is based on files leaked from the Labor Party by whistleblowers.
Meanwhile, during Simons’ correspondence with the NCSC, the cyber security agency had already confirmed that the Election Commission had been hacked, but that it was orchestrated by China. Also, the stolen information includes election records, not the watchdog’s correspondence on regulatory matters.
A spokesman for Josh Simons said: “Labour Together commissioned Opco to investigate the information Paul Holden obtained for his book, which has been made clear repeatedly.”
