A left-wing government minister is facing calls to be sacked over reports claiming that he used his position at an anti-Breitbart think tank to levy false allegations of Russian collusion against journalists who reported on his organisation, Labour Together.
Josh Simons, who is presently the Labour MP for Makerfield and a junior Cabinet Office minister, has been accused of orchestrating a smear campaign against multiple journalists. Among those allegedly targeted by Simons were those who exposed the Labour Together think tank of having failed to declare £730,000 in donations taken in between 2017 and 2020 under Morgan McSweeney, the architect of Prime Minister Starmer’s rise to power and until earlier this month, his chief of staff.
Following a report exposing the failure to disclose donations in The Sunday Times, Simons, then the head of Labour Together, is said to have hired American public relations firm Apco Worldwide to investigate the “backgrounds and motivations” of the journalists who exposed his think tank as violating Electoral Commission rules.
According to a report from The Guardian, Simons was personally involved in informing British intelligence of claims from the PR agency tying the journalists to the Kremlin. The left-wing paper claimed to have obtained emails between Simons and his then deputy at Labour Together and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) branch of Britain’s GCHQ spy agency.
They are said to have told intelligence officials that they believed the reporting of Sunday Times journalists Harry Yorke and Gabriel Pogrund in conjunction with South African investigative reporter Paul Holden to be a product of a “coordinated effort to discredit” Labour Together and by extension Starmer and McSweeney by Russia. In one email, Simons reportedly claimed that the expose may have been tied to “people known to be operating in a pro-Kremlin propaganda network with links to Russian intelligence”.
However, according to the Guardian, “There is no credible evidence any of the journalists were involved in a pro-Russian campaign, or that their story, published in November 2023, was anything other than a public interest report on the prominent thinktank’s breach of electoral law.”
Although intelligence officials reportedly rejected the allegations made by Apco and told Simons that they would not investigate the supposed links of the journalists to Russia, the then-Labour Together boss is said to have attempted to shop the claims to the British press, including telling the Guardian that Holden had obtained the information concerning the failure of the think tank to disclose funding was originally sourced by Russian hackers.
Yet, GCHQ later determined that it was China who hacked the Electoral Commission rather than Russia. Meanwhile, the Guardian also claimed to have seen Holden’s source materials, and that they indicated internal leaks from whistleblowers from within Labour Together, rather than a hack.
Holden has gone on to detail the underhanded means deployed by Labour Together, and its astroturf cut out groups such as Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) and the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), which engaged in Sleeping Giants-style advertiser boycotts to defund and demonetise non-friendly news outlets.
According to the South African journalist, this initially targeted far-left news operations, particularly those supportive of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was purged from the Labour party he once led by McSweeney and Starmer.
However, Holden also has claimed that McSweeney and his allies’ “astroturf campaign… mounted a ferocious attack on non-conformist media and free speech on both sides of the Atlantic.” This allegedly included attempts to “cancel” outlets with favourable reporting on Brexit leader Nigel Farage and attempts to “ensure that Breitbart was barred from receiving any advertising at all from the UK’s Cabinet Office.”
So far, McSweeney has failed to address the controversy surrounding the organisation he helped found. He resigned from his position as chief of staff to Prime Minister Starmer earlier this month over his advice to tap Lord Peter Mandelson — a veteran Labour political operative who is said to have mentored McSweeney — as Ambassador to the United States despite having known that Mandelson had kept up ties with financier Jeffrey Epstein after a child sex prostitution conviction.
The latest report surrounding McSweeney’s successor have sparked demands that Simons be sacked, including from the Times of London editorial board. The chairman of the Conservative Party Kevin Hollinrake said at the very least he should be suspended from the Cabinet Office while an inquiry is conducted because Simons has “ministerial responsibility for inquiries and whistleblowing across government” while questions are being raised over his conduct.
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