‘Kill the Canary – before it kills us’: how Starmer’s top Downing Street aide plotted ours and Corbyn’s downfall

In a bizarre turn of events, the Guardian/Observer has revealed that Labour Party PM Keir Starmer’s top Downing Street aide Morgan McSweeney plotted to ‘destroy the Canary‘ – before ‘we destroyed the Labour right’. It shows not only how him and his closest cronies tried to kill us – but also how they brought about Jeremy Corbyn’s downfall. The intention all along? To install Starmer as Labour leader, and eventually PM.

Morgan McSweeney: creating fake antisemitism crises

You can read the Observer piece here. It is extracts from Taken as Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party by Anushka Asthana. In it, she describes how McSweeney – he of Liz Kendall failed leadership bid campaign fame – rose up the ranks in Labour. He got to the point where, after 2017’s near-election victory for Corbyn, McSweeney was determined to finish Corbyn off. So, he began rallying his troops.

The group (now known as supposed think tank Labour Together) included Trevor Chinn (executive committee member of pro-Israel lobbying group the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) and hedge fund manager Martin Taylor. Labour Together was born – and MPs on its side included Jon Cruddas and Steve Reed.

As Asthana wrote:

One of McSweeney’s obsessions was the Canary, an alt-left website that had seemed to appear from nowhere and grown to a peak of 8.5m hits a month. Moreover, Corbyn supporters trusted the site equally to the Guardian, their other favourite source of information.

And so McSweeney had an aim – to schmooze the Guardian and kill the Canary.

“Destroy the Canary or the Canary destroys us,” he told the Labour Together MPs.

So, the antisemitism ‘crisis’ was created. At the time, much of the Canary’s traffic – as well as huge swathes of the voting public’s exposure to news – came through pro-Corbyn and left-wing Facebook groups, as well as people’s feeds.

So, McSweeney and his cronies went searching through these groups for anything they could deem antisemitic.

As Asthana wrote:

They then farmed out the posts they uncovered to journalists who were themselves reporting on rising evidence of antisemitism on the left.

That is, Labour Together was actively infiltrating or monitoring members of the public’s social media to try and destroy Corbyn – firstly by trying to “shame” people out of these Facebook groups, thus reducing the spread and impact of left-wing conversations. However, that didn’t work – so McSweeney and his cult came after the Canary.

‘Kill the Canary – before the Canary kills us’

As Asthana wrote:

As part of a “Stop funding fake news” campaign, they took screenshots of articles they felt had either racist or fake content, then posted messages on Twitter aimed at brands that were advertising on the websites’ pages. Unquestionably, the readership of the Canary took a hit.

That part is incorrect. It wasn’t our readership that took a hit. That had already happened due to (oddly) Facebook changing its algorithms to de-prioritise news and groups on people’s feeds. A coincidence? Maybe. What McSweeney did hit was the Canary’s advertising revenue. However, at the time support for us surged and we had more financial supporters than ever before.

It goes without saying none of our content was racist or fake. An independent investigation by government-approved media regulator IMPRESS found nothing the Canary published was antisemitic.

However, what McSweeney did achieve was to tarnish the Canary’s reputation. Of course, he also achieved his ultimate goal of destroying Corbyn’s leadership and getting Keir Starmer into power. Now, McSweeney sits at the top of 10 Downing Street as head of political strategy.

Of course, the Canary already knew most of this. As John McEvoy reported for us in 2019, Stop Funding Fake News was his and Lisa Nandy’s project:

Between its founding and the 2019 general election, SFFN targeted the Canary – which the campaign acknowledged was its largest target – more than any other website, with 176 individual posts on Twitter. The operation has been scaled down since the election, with 42 individual posts targeting the Canary in a greater amount of time.

However, it seems no-one else cared – until now.

The Labour Party: an election victory off the back of lies, deceit, and nefarious tactics

In short, we now know Keir Starmer is only in Downing Street because McSweeney and his collaborators actively worked to destroy not just Corbyn but an entire movement across the country – by infiltrating Facebook groups, orchestrating smear campaigns, and trying to destroy independent media.

The man at the centre of all this is now holding many of the cards in government. He was aided and abetted by people like Lisa Nandy, Tom Watson, Liz Kendall, Rachel Riley, Steve Reed, and numerous other political and public figures.

Yet, these people are now the “grown ups” in charge of politics in this country – and are influencing chains of events across the planet.

What Asthana’s revelations about McSweeney show are a number of things.

Firstly, they underscore the lack of surprise anyone should have that Starmer’s government is attacking poor, older, and disabled people. McSweeney and Co quite literally sought to destroy members of the public and journalists’ careers and lives to get Labour Together into power in the party. Going after some of society’s most vulnerable people once in government is hardly a leap.

Secondly, it shows that no-one in Starmer’s team should be trusted – because they all turned on a dime and sold Corbyn out in one way, shape, or form. Moreover, McSweeney hid £750k of donations to Labour Together from the Electoral Commission. Fiscal responsibility, and all that.

And finally, it shows once again the importance of independent media.

Sleep with one eye open, McSweeney

Despite having the weight of a now-government fighting against us, the Canary is still here. McSweeney certainly didn’t destroy us – although it has been touch and go (not all due to him). It also didn’t destroy Corbyn and everything he, us, and so many of you stand for.

If anything, McSweeney started a chain of events that will be near-impossible to undo: the collapse of the two-party system in the UK as well as public trust in politics.

However, mark our words.

The Canary will now hold Starmer, the Labour Party, and this government fully to account with more fervour than ever before. That includes McSweeney.

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Featured image via the Canary