178: PAUL FOOT 2026: HARD LABOUR
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:19
2
What is the main story behind Labour Together and its funding?
0:19–1:26
3
Who is Morgan MacSweeney and what role did he play in Labour Together?
1:26–2:32
4
What significant actions did Labour Together take regarding undeclared funding?
2:32–3:19
5
How did APCO Worldwide get involved in discrediting journalists?
3:19–3:46
6
What methods did APCO use to investigate the journalists?
3:46–4:58
7
What were the consequences of the undeclared funding story?
4:58–5:51
8
How did the public and media react to the story of Labour Together?
5:51–12:48