“You might not be interested in Morgan McSweeney, but he’s very interested in you.”
This was what author and journalist Paul Holden said to me when I asked him why we should be paying attention to Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and read his upcoming book The Fraud, about how the Prime Minister's close ally has wielded extraordinary and “disturbing” power over the Labour Party.
Holden, who spent years investigating deep-seated corruption in his native country South Africa when former president Jacob Zuma was in power, started working on the book in late 2021 when he got the opportunity to look through a large leak of documents from the Labour Party.
At first, he wasn’t interested in pursuing a project about “gossipy, internal Labour Party politics”. He also had no idea who McSweeney was.
But he quickly realised there was something “pretty dark and profound” going on.
The Fraud – due to be released later this month – is billed as an exposure of the “intrigues, stratagems and deceits” that helped to propel Starmer into Downing Street.
Holden told The National people should be “terrified” about how McSweeney has come to have such huge influence over our lives.
“He [McSweeney] is currently making the decisions that determine the outcome of your life,” Holden said, when asked why we should take an interest in McSweeney.
“You might not be interested in Morgan McSweeney, but he’s very interested in you, because he’s effectively running the Government alongside a small number of allies.
“Morgan McSweeney, Steve Reed [Housing Secretary], Keir Starmer, Shabana Mahmood [Home Secretary], are all part of this political project, who I think are really driving the Labour Party in a direction that will lead to its short-term annihilation, opening up space for Farage.
“There’s also something very disturbing about McSweeney. He’s sort of emblematic about how we shouldn’t be doing our politics."
Who is McSweeney and how did he get so powerful?
McSweeney joined the Labour Party back in the early 2000s and for many years he was working in London politics.
Holden said McSweeney’s entry into the heart of Labour Party politics was when he began working with Steve Reed – now Housing Secretary. McSweeney campaigned for Reed in the 2006 Lambeth London Borough Council election, working to take control of the council from the LibDems and Conservatives.
But it is around 2017 when Holden said his trajectory to power “fundamentally changes”, as he joined Labour Together on the back of then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn doing better than expected in the General Election.
McSweeney was director of Labour Together – described by Holden as a “miniscule” faction within the party – between 2017 and 2020.
Holden (above) explained: “When he joins Labour Together, his plan is two-fold – one, I will destroy Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, and then in that process I will also incubate a new leadership campaign that will take over the party and make sure there can never be another Corbyn moment.”
McSweeney then left Labour Together to manage Starmer’s leadership campaign, which Holden explains he had been “incubating” with Starmer since July 2019, when it became clear Corbyn was not going to do well in the General Election.
“They execute this very well thought through, entirely despicable con on the Labour Party membership, which is to present and curate this image of Keir Starmer as this left-wing eco-socialist who wants to unite the party, when actually he’s just a stalking horse for the McSweeneyite faction, who want nothing more than to shift the party back to its Blairite mode,” Holden said.
In 2021, McSweeney’s name came into the spotlight when the Electoral Commission fined Labour Together £14,250 for failing to deliver donation reports within 30 days, inaccurately reporting donations and failing to appoint a responsible person within 30 days of accepting a donation.
During McSweeney's time at Labour Together, the group received donations totalling more than £700,000 that were not declared. The Fraud places a particular focus on the "machinations" made possible by McSweeney's failure to disclose these donations, later credited for helping Starmer's leadership bid.
Labour Together has insisted it "proactively raised concerns" with the Electoral Commission over the undeclared donations and has since "taken measures" to ensure it was "fully compliant with all Electoral Commission regulations".
Holden said he did not believe the failure to report the donations was a result of "human error and administrative oversight" as claimed by Labour Together.
He went on: “To be clear, it’s my opinion, based on the documentation I’ve looked at, that the idea he simply failed to report them as some sort of big mistake, that this grand strategist and master manipulator didn’t know how to fill in a form, just doesn’t wash for me.”
What will the book reveal?
So far, revelations in the book have led to the resignation of Paul Ovenden, who had been Starmer’s director of political strategy.
The book exposed texts he sent eight years ago that contained inappropriate sexual comments about Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black female MP and a regular target of racist and misogynist abuse.
The National revealed earlier this week that Labour Together hired private investigators to explore the background of Holden.
The investigators sought points of “leverage” that could be used against him and tried to place stories in the media that would damage his reputation.
Holden is currently keeping schtum about other revelations in the book, but has said there will be further disclosures about senior figures in Government.
He added there is a “whole section” that looks at racism within the Labour Party.
Holden said: “The book proves beyond doubt that this very small faction around McSweeney dominates this government and the Labour Party.
“At a very fundamental level they are responsible for, brutally, why the Labour Party is not very good at governing and why they are governed in a way a lot of people are very surprised by.
“If you follow the story from the beginning, this is a despicable, ruthless faction that used underhanded methods to achieve power."
