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British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has initiated an investigation into a campaign group accused of attempting to tarnish journalists by falsely linking them to Russia. The group in question, Labour Together, is under scrutiny for its alleged involvement in a smear campaign.
The Cabinet Office has been directed to probe Labour Together, a think tank established by Morgan McSweeney, who previously served as Starmer’s chief of staff. This organization played a significant role in Starmer’s political ascent by setting up groups that censored supporters of ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and targeted conservative media outlets like Breitbart News.
Recent controversies surrounding McSweeney include his role in appointing Lord Peter Mandelson, who has ties to Jeffrey Epstein, as an ambassador to the United States. In addition, Labour Together is accused of engaging the American PR firm APCO Worldwide with a payment of at least £30,000 to investigate journalists from the Sunday Times and Guardian.
The allegations surfaced following a report by the Times revealing that McSweeney did not declare £730,000 in donations to Labour Together. According to Democracy for Sale, an independent outlet, APCO allegedly made false claims that the journalists obtained information through Russian or Chinese hacks into Britain’s Electoral Commission. The firm reportedly also looked into the journalists’ backgrounds and motivations.
Prime Minister Starmer, addressing the matter on Monday, stated through the BBC that he was unaware of the APCO Worldwide operation. He emphasized, “It absolutely needs to be looked into.”
Technology Secretary Liz Kendall told Times Radio on Monday that an investigation into Labour Together will include the role of its former director, Josh Simons, who was in charge of the think tank when APCO was commissioned and has since joined Starmer’s government as the digital minister.
“The Cabinet Office will be investigating the facts of what has happened. There’s already an investigation going on by the regulatory body that covers public affairs agencies, and that is absolutely right, too,” she said.
Simons has claimed that APCO Worldwide went beyond its brief and said that he was “shocked” that its report included “unnecessary information” on Times journalist Gabriel Pogrund, which he said he asked to be removed before passing the report to the intelligence services.
Nevertheless, Conservative Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake said that the behaviour of Labour Together demonstrated a ” worrying contempt for the free press”.
“With its close and widely known links to the heart of government, serious questions must be answered about who was aware of these actions, including whether senior figures around the prime minister knew.”
Labour Together came under increased scrutiny late last year after it was claimed by South African investigative journalist Paul Holden that the McSweeney-founded group had created multiple leftist cutout groups, including Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), to wage censorship campaigns against the far-left in Britain and conservatives in the United States, including Breitbart News.
For example, in 2020, the CCDH had reportedly lobbied Google to ban conservative sites, including Breitbart, from its advertising programme. The NGO had also previously defined its core mission as “Kill Musk’s Twitter”.
In December, Centre for Countering Digital Hate director Imran Ahmed was sanctioned by the Trump administration for his role in the “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose.”