The Guardian is still laying cover for Morgan McSweeney and Labour Together

The Labour Party has stated that Starmer’s leadership campaign paid Morgan McSweeney’s salary back in 2020. As such, the party holds that it didn’t need to declare McSweeney’s support as a donation. This is significant in the light of recent attacks from Tories over whether Labour should have declared support from McSweeney’s thinktank Labour Together. The opposition is now calling for an investigation into the nature of the party’s relationship with Labour Together.

However, at this point you’d have thought outlets like the Guardian would not try to diminish what McSweeney and Labour Together had been doing. Well, you would have thought wrong.

‘Nothing to see here Keir’ – except with Labour Together there always is

Records at Companies House show that McSweeney helmed Labour Together until 2020. After Starmer’s successful takeover of the Labour Party, McSweeney then became a senior aide to the man himself.

Conservative chair Kevin Hollinrake argued that McSweeney’s role in Starmer’s leadership bid should have been entered into the parliamentary register as a donation from Labour Together. He said:

Donations or support in kind to MPs from members’ associations must be declared – yet ‘nothing to see here Keir’ completely failed to do so.

However, a Labour source told the Guardian:

Morgan’s salary was paid for by Keir’s leadership campaign for the duration of the campaign, not Labour Together. Neither Keir nor his leadership campaign accepted monetary or in-kind donations from Labour Together during the leadership election.

Investigation pending

The Electoral Commission previously fined Labour Together over £14k for mishandling donations back in 2021. The think tank declared over £730k of donations late, citing an “admin error” at the time.

However, last week the Tories put out a leaked email from a Labour lawyer to Labour Together. The lawyer, Gerald Shamash, said that there was:

no easy way to explain how Labour Together finds itself in this situation… if Labour Together cannot deal substantively with questions I pose then perhaps [it is] simply best to base our case as to the non-reporting down as admin error.

McSweeney had claimed that the Electoral Commission told him he didn’t need to declare donations back in 2018. However, Shamash stated that neither Labour nor the Watchdog had any record of this exchange. The lawyer also warned that Labour Together should try “to be seen as transparent as possible” on the subject.

The Conservatives are now claiming that the the think tank’s so-called administrative errors were a “false excuse”. Hollingrake contacted the Electoral Commission last week to demand an new investigation into McSweeney and his leadership of Labour Together.

So, enter the Guardian to downplay the entire affair.

That’s not quite true, is it

The Guardian article on the controversy reported that:

Between 2017 and 2020 McSweeney was director of Labour Together, which began as a vehicle to prevent the Labour party from splitting under Jeremy Corbyn. After Corbyn stepped down after losing the 2019 general election, McSweeney ran Starmer’s campaign to become Labour leader.

Now, this is a bit disingenuous for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, Labour Together’s aims weren’t exactly to keep the party from splitting. A Guardian article from just last year stated that the think tank aimed to:

try to defeat Corbynism – and the Corbynite who would inevitably run in any future contest to lead the party.

The same article also goes on to talk about McSweeney sucking up to the Guardian itself (which yesterday’s article also forgets to mention):

As for the Guardian schmoozing, I witnessed that first-hand. At the time, I was the joint political editor at the newspaper and found myself invited with colleagues to a dinner in a private dining room in the basement of Browns in Covent Garden. We sat on red chairs with gold trimming, set around a long, thin table covered with a white tablecloth, listening to McSweeney, Cruddas, Reed, [Wigan MP Lisa] Nandy and [Birmingham Ladywood MP Shabana] Mahmood tell us about Labour Together’s plans for renewal.

As a side note, McSweeney also mounted a campaign to try to destroy the Canary. We were a strong supporter of Corbyn at the time (and remain so), and the Labour left in general (not so much on that one anymore). This put a target on our backs for Labour Together and their bid to drag the party to the right.

As such, we’d like to cordially invite readers to direct their applause for the current sorry state of the Labour Party to McSweeney and his buddies at the Guardian. Please do take a bow, excellent work there.

The Electoral Commission is currently deliberating on whether any of the new information published by the Tories warrants reopening its investigation of Labour Together. We should know the results of its decision by the end of the week.

Featured image via the Canary