Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome back to Page 94's Paul Foot Award shortlist mini-series. Let's find out who is the fourth of the six journalists shortlisted for this year's award. Page 94, the Private Eye podcast.
My name is Peter Gagan and I am the editor of Democracy for Sale.
Chapter 2: What is the main story behind Labour Together and its funding?
And what is the story that's brought you to the Paul Foot Awards?
I'm at the Paul Ford Awards for a story that I did with my colleague Khadija Sharif, which was all about how Labour Together, the campaign group slash think tank behind Keir Starmer, had hired a PR firm called APCO to investigate a bunch of journalists who had been reporting on their undeclared political funding, undeclared funding that was used to power Keir Starmer's rise to power.
Okay, so quite a significant one. Can you tell us a bit more about Labour Together, just for anyone who hasn't been keeping on top of Starmerite think tanks recently?
If you've not heard of Labour Together, they've actually, since the story went out, they've changed their name. I think this story actually possibly contributed to the change of the name. They're now called, as of last week, Think Labour.
But basically Labour Together was the kind of think tank campaign group, call it what you want, that was set up by various people after Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership in 2015. It was set up by various people and various wings of Labour Party, as the name suggests, as a way as a kind of cross party organisation, broadly opposed to Corbyn, looking to see where else Labour should go.
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Chapter 3: Who is Morgan MacSweeney and what role did he play in Labour Together?
Over time, though, a very familiar name to many people became very involved, Morgan MacSweeney. Morgan MacSweeney took over as the head of Labour Together. He then became Keir Starmer's chief of staff. But throughout the period and up until the 2024 general election, which Labour obviously won, Labour Together was a very important organisation. It's important for a bunch of reasons.
One was it was quietly, wasn't that public about it, was really doing a lot of polling and camp focus group for Keir Starmer. So it's kind of pushing Starmer's campaign, but also taking in lots and lots of money. It took in millions and millions of pounds of donations.
It used that money to do things like run polling and focus groups, but also gave out money to politicians, to would-be politicians, to Labour people, to people that were aligned with Starmer and the Labour Together project. So it was a very significant, important organisation, especially in the make-up of the government that we have now.
Yes. I mean, as you said in the story, the various MPs they backed include about half a dozen who reached senior cabinet positions. Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Shabana Mahmood, Darren Jones. Lots of people had received Labour Together money.
Chapter 4: What significant actions did Labour Together take regarding undeclared funding?
Obviously, that will be regulated, I'm sure. Can you tell us a bit more about who's in charge of the regulation? Who's supposed to be doing it?
The crux of this story really was when Labour Together was kind of becoming this big, powerful political machine, like really for a good few years at the start of Labour Together, it had been a kind of slightly come by across labour thing where they'd hold, you know, they'd write the odd report and they'd hold the odd meeting. Under Morgan McSweeney, it changed.
They got an office just south of the river in London, had a little pirate flag in the office, kind of sense of, you know, we're buccaneering out in the high seas. And at that stage, money started coming in, money often from big former Labour donors who'd stopped giving money to party under Jeremy Corbyn.
So all the big money that used to go into Labour really started to flow away from Jeremy Corbyn. And it started going to Labour Together.
Chapter 5: How did APCO Worldwide get involved in discrediting journalists?
So people like Martin Taylor, the hedge fund manager, Trevor Chin, the businessman, other people like that started funding Labour Together. And one of the things that happened was under Max Sweeney's watch was they didn't declare this money to the Electoral Commission for a very, very, very long time.
So the Electoral Commission found that Labour Together had breached electoral rules more than 20 times by failing to declare this money. And fast forward to 2023, by which stage Morgan MacSweeney is now Chief of Staff to Keir Starmer.
Chapter 6: What methods did APCO use to investigate the journalists?
He's a really important character. He's really in the driving seat of British politics. And Labour Together has now been run by a guy called Josh Simons. And at that point, a story appears in the Sunday Times in November 2023. And the story is all about this undeclared funding.
It's about this money that hadn't been declared, which at this stage, the Electoral Commission had fined Labour Together for, but no one had really looked at it that much. And I was looking at how this money was spent and how this money was spent to help Keir Starmer's campaign into the Labour leadership.
And that was a crucial point for the start of my story. Okay. We should say the sum of money undeclared in donations was about Ā£730,000. Yeah. What happens next after that story is run?
So after this story appears in the Sunday Times about this Ā£730,000 of undeclared funding, Labour Together, under Josh Simons, decided to do something that I think, you know, you and I would, this is what you do if a negative press story came out. They hired a lobbying firm, a PR firm, a company called Abco Worldwide.
I struggle to say exactly what they are because they sit in that kind of grey box of, you know, consultancy, advisory, intelligence, etc.
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Chapter 7: What were the consequences of the undeclared funding story?
But a big, big, well-known company. They hired APCO Worldwide, and they hired APCO Worldwide to investigate the sources of this story, particularly a journalist called Paul Holden, who was an important source for the Sunday Times story, but also Gabriel Pogron and Harry York at the Sunday Times.
Henry Dyer, who by that stage had gone to The Guardian, had also written about Labour Together as well. And so Abco Worldwide were given a brief to go and investigate where did these sources have come from, but also to put out information into the media to try and change the narrative around this.
That's a very polite way of saying it, to change the narrative. Yes, it is a very polite way of saying it. Can we say to discredit the story and the journalists?
I think you can, actually. It should be a little bit less. They paid APCO Worldwide to discredit these journalists, to discredit their work, where they come from, and that was how they were trying to stop this story dead.
Chapter 8: How did the public and media react to the story of Labour Together?
I think we should also just pause and reflect for a moment on how extremely unusual this is. This is really not common, even if a negative story is printed about you, to effectively commission a firm to discredit the story. It's rare. I've never seen this before.
So when I was coming up to publication on this story, and this, as a journalist, what you often do is, I ring people in worlds to sense check. You know, to sense check, am I right about this? Spoke to senior political reporters, like, I have never heard of this report. I also spoke to a very good contact in the public affairs world, which is the same word as APCO. And they were shocked.
They were like, APCO did this? Wow. And my favourite one was I actually spoke to John Cruddas, who set up Labour Together. And he said, Peter, this is dark shit.
Can you tell us what methods APCO were using to discredit the story? Well, so it was very interesting.
So what APCO did was they put together, there was a brief which we were able to obtain that APCO put together for Labour Together. So they paid just over Ā£30,000 to do this work. And they did things like what we call OSINT, human intelligence.
So effectively, which means going and talking to people, talking to sources, putting together a kind of a report, a brief, kind of online sleuthing, looking for information online. and just effectively trying to find any intelligence they could from anyone. So talking surreptitiously to people who might know some of the people involved.
The briefs themselves, the material that APCO put together, I have to say, it's quite shocking, actually. What they said in their material is full of aspersions. It suggests that the stories, these negative stories, are the product of a Russian hack of the Electoral Commission, of which there's no evidence whatsoever.
And when I was breaking this story, I asked both Abco and Labour together, you know, if you thought you were hacked, why did you hire a PR firm? They didn't do any investigation into cybersecurity. It was all about, like, understanding where this material had come from and trying to smoke out the sources.
Which, as a journalist, is incredibly dangerous if you're trying to find out where the sources of someone's story is. And it was done by a guy called Tom Harper, who used to work for the Sunday Times. So Tom Harper was the Sunday Times, and he headed up APCO Worldwide's Europe division. He's now left APCO. And Tom was the person in charge of putting together these briefs.
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