Revealed: Government accused of ‘conflict of interest’ over journalist smear inquiry
Starmer said Cabinet Office will investigate Josh Simons and Labour Together - but its ministers have received more than £150,000 from the think tank and its directors
At Democracy for Sale we’re dedicated to exposing corruption. Few stories better illustrate the abuse of power and protection than Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office this week.
As historian Andrew Lownie explained to us in November, the King’s brother was protected by the state for decades. Lawyers and PR advisers suppressed negative stories. Documents were destroyed or withheld.
But attempts to suppress the truth in British public life don’t stop at the gates of Windsor Castle.
For the last few weeks we have written extensively about how Labour Together hired a PR firm to discredit journalists. It’s a shocking story.
The think tank that made Keir Starmer paid private investigators at APCO to dig up dirt on reporters who had exposed at least £730,000 in undeclared funding for Labour Together: cash that was used to fuel the prime minister’s rise to power.
Our reporting on this scandal has made headlines across the media and has now triggered an inquiry by the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team.
So what’s the problem? Surely this means we’ll finally get to the bottom of Labour Together’s black ops campaign? We’re not so confident.
For a start, it’s an ‘informal inquiry’, not a full investigation. And Josh Simons - the former Labour Together chief who commissioned the PR firm - is now a minister… in the Cabinet Office.
But the ties between Labour Together and the department that is supposed to be “establishing the facts” stretch well beyond Simons’ ministerial brief.
Democracy for Sale can today report that Labour Together and its directors have donated more than £150,000 to sitting Cabinet Office ministers.
The donations include £57,400 and £35,500 respectively to key Starmer allies Darren Jones and Nick Thomas-Symonds ahead of the 2024 general election.
Cabinet Office boss Jones is now responsible for propriety and ethics, while Thomas-Symonds’ remit includes inquiries policy.
Another Cabinet Office minister, Anna Turley, received £10,000 from Labour Together and £10,000 from think tank director Fran Perrin in 2024. Simons himself has received £40,000 from Perrin and £5,000 from another Labour Together board member, Mike Craven, since the start of 2024.
Separately, a former Labour Together director now holds a senior role in the same Cabinet Office unit that is charged with running the government’s probe into Simons.
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell described it as “preposterous” for the Cabinet Office to investigate Labour Together while ministers and senior staff have long-standing financial and personnel links to the organisation.
MPs in other parties also joined the call for an independent investigation in the wake of our findings.
“There is a clear risk here of Labour Together being perceived to be marking its own homework, via the taxpayer-funded Cabinet Office,” said Lib Dem MP Bobby Dean, vice-chair of the APPG on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax.
Labour Together’s ties to the Cabinet Office run deep. The £35,500 donation that Thomas-Symonds received was to second one of the think tank’s staffers Jess Sargeant to his office, while in opposition.
After Labour’s election win, Sargeant joined the Cabinet Office as a deputy director in the Propriety, Ethics and Constitution Group, sparking accusations of ‘cronyism’ given her former role at Labour Together, where she worked under Simons.
Notably, her LinkedIn omits Labour Together, listing her as “director of constitutional change” at an unnamed think tank.
The Cabinet Office declined to comment on Sargeant’s social media profile but said her government work focuses on the constitution and that she will have no involvement in the investigation of her former boss and employer.
A spokesperson said: “Officials in the Cabinet Office’s Propriety, Ethics and Constitution Group will establish the facts, as has been the case under successive administrations.”
However, the Cabinet Office repeatedly refused to answer our questions about who is running the Labour Together inquiry, whether terms of reference have been agreed, and how potential conflicts are being managed.
Kevin Hollinrake MP, chairman of the Conservative Party, told us that the government “must clarify who is leading this inquiry, publish its terms of reference, and explain how it is being conducted impartially.”
He also called on Sargeant and any Cabinet Office ministers who had received funding from Labour Together to recuse themselves from the inquiry, “particularly as it involves an investigation into a fellow minister.”
As chief executive of Labour Together, Josh Simons hired PR firm APCO in November 2023, to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins” of stories in the Sunday Times, and by Paul Holden, Matt Taibbi and others about £730,000 in undeclared donations that supported Starmer’s rise - and for which Labour Together was fined £14,250 by the Electoral Commission.
APCO’s briefings included baseless allegations that journalists had received information hacked by Russia, and, in the case of Sunday Times’ reporter Gabriel Pogrund, comments about his Jewish ethnicity and supposed political beliefs.
Morgan McSweeney, who built Labour Together before becoming - until recently - Starmer’s right-hand man in government, was aware of APCO’s work. Yesterday, the Guardian revealed that Simons pressed intelligence officials to investigate the journalists who had reported critically on Labour Together
As attention on the smear operation has grown, Labour has maintained that it has no formal relationship with Labour Together. But the financial and personnel links between the two are extensive.
Labour Together donated more than £2.5 million to Labour ahead of the 2024 general election. In all, no less than 14 other serving ministers received financial support from the organisation ahead of the 2024 general election, including Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Shabana Mahmood, Yvette Cooper and John Healey.
The think tank’s funding has come from a small group of wealthy donors who have also backed Labour. Hedge fund boss Martin Taylor donated £4 million; Lord David Sainsbury and Gary Lubner each gave more than £1 million; Trevor Chinn contributed more than £400,000.
Speaking in the Commons in November, Simons said that the “the Prime Minister believes that restoring standards in public life and restoring trust in this House and in democracy is the most important mission for this Government.”
But Dr Sue Hawley, executive director at Spotlight on Corruption told us that Labour Together’s past donations to Cabinet Office ministers represented a “clear conflict of interest” and that a fully independent investigation was needed.
“It’s very difficult to see how the Cabinet Office can now run a legitimate investigation into the alleged conduct of Labour Together when its own ministers have been beneficiaries of donations from the group.”
The undeclared £730k (and subsequent £15k fine from the Electoral Commission) isn't the issue here - the issue is the subsequent smear campaign against journalists doing their job. The clue's in the title. You might not care about who is throwing money into politics and their reasons for doing so, but some of us do.
How can that be allowed? Findings would be discredited as a result?