KEIR Starmer's allies hired private investigators to explore the background of an author whose book led to the resignation of the Prime Minister's director of strategy, The National has learned.
Labour Together, the Labour Party grouping that helped propel Starmer to power, hired the individuals to find information on Paul Holden, the journalist whose book The Fraud was the source for revelations that resulted in the downfall of Paul Ovenden earlier this month.
It also explored Holden’s personal life, sought points of “leverage” that could be used against him and tried to place stories in the media that would damage his reputation.
“I suspect they're deeply worried about what I intend to reveal about the political project that brought Starmer to power,” Holden says.
Also targeted was Andrew Feinstein, who stood against Keir Starmer as an independent in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency in the July 2024 election.
The National has obtained two confidential intelligence reports compiled at the request of Labour Together by a well-known public affairs and strategic communications consultancy that specialises in sensitive political and crisis management issues.
The first, drawn up in December 2023, was prompted by a November 2023 exposé in The Sunday Times about Labour Together’s failure to declare £730,000 in funding to the Electoral Commission.
The article was written by Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, but stated that “Electoral Commission documents were made available by Paul Holden”.
Labour Together was found guilty of 20 breaches of electoral law in September 2021 and fined £14,250, the Electoral Commission apparently accepting the explanation that the failure to declare was an administrative error.
The Sunday Times article highlighted the role played by Morgan McSweeney, now Starmer’s chief of staff, who was director of Labour Together when the breaches occurred between 2017 and 2020. It raised questions over whether the failure to report was an innocent mistake, revealing McSweeney had assured MPs involved with Labour Together that donations were being declared.
The consultancy’s report stated The Sunday Times article was alarming because it contained evidence not previously in the public domain and raised concerns about what more information Holden may have.
The National has seen an email from Josh Simons (below), McSweeney’s successor as director of Labour Together and now parliamentary secretary for the Cabinet Office, where he forwards to the consultancy what appears to be a right of reply letter from The Sunday Times.
The second report, produced at the end of December 2023, also explored the background of Feinstein. Feinstein is executive director of Shadow World Investigations (SWI), an NGO that conducts research on the arms trade. The consultancy’s attention was drawn to Feinstein because Holden is director of investigations at SWI.
The report identified Feinstein as being active in the “Stop Starmer” campaign group. News that Feinstein was considering running against Starmer emerged publicly for the first time on February 11, 2024. Feinstein gained 19% of the vote in the July election.
Neither report revealed any wrongdoing by either Holden or Feinstein. Instead, they focused on their involvement in a variety of left-wing causes which, the second report suggested, might indicate “potential biases” in their research and journalism.
It pointed out Holden received funding for work on corruption in South Africa from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and suggested this represented “a significant leverage point”.
The comment could be seen as a suggestion Labour Together bring pressure to bear on the Open Society Foundations to withdraw funding for Holden’s work.
Neither of the consultancy’s reports made any claim that Holden’s journalism was inaccurate.
The National understands the consultancy also explored Holden’s domestic circumstances and family connections.
The second report focused particularly on the possibility that Holden and Feinstein had Russian links.
This was based partly on the fact both have backgrounds in South Africa, where Feinstein was an MP for the African National Congress (ANC) between 1994 and 2001. The consultancy speculated they were linked to the Russians through ANC intelligence operations.
Holden describes the suggestion of Russian links as “absurd.”
“Andrew and I have previously faced legal and extra-legal threats related to our investigations into Russian oligarchs linked to Putin,” he said. “Anybody who knows anything about South African politics knows that president Jacob Zuma was closely allied with Putin, and that Andrew and I have been trying to get Zuma [below] prosecuted for corruption for over a decade.”
Feinstein points out: “I was the prosecution’s lead witness in Zuma’s corruption trial and was forced out of Parliament by the ANC-led government for my role in exposing my own party’s corruption."
The consultancy’s investigators appeared not to have taken “even a cursory glance at our published work,” he said.
In January 2024, Holden began working with The Daily Telegraph on a new article that further challenged Labour Together’s claim that its failure to declare funding was the result of an administrative error.
It provided evidence, some from Freedom of Information requests, that the Electoral Commission had given McSweeney very clear guidance in 2017 that funds should be declared.
On February 8, 2024, before the article was published but after The Daily Telegraph had reached out to Labour Together for a response, Holden says he received a phone call from a journalist calling himself Max Young.
Young claimed to be from OpenDemocracy, an independent media outlet focused on progressive causes.
Young quizzed Holden about what further information he planned to publish on McSweeney. Suspicious, Holden terminated the call. He contacted OpenDemocracy and found Young did not work there. Holden reported the call to the police.
The National has no evidence the caller was connected to the consultancy or Labour Together.
The following day, Holden received an email from Pippa Crerar, the political editor of The Guardian.
Crerar informed him The Guardian planned to run an article the next day revealing “that the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is investigating whether information obtained from an Electoral Commission hack may have been used to target the Labour Party.”
The Electoral Commission had reported it had been hacked in August 2023.
“The Guardian understands that part of the NCSC's investigation is whether emails (subsequently leaked to you) came from that cyber hack,” Crerar’s email went on. In a subsequent email she made clear the inquiry had been prompted by “Labour Together reporting its concerns to the NCSC.”
Holden firmly denied the allegation against him and threatened to sue, pointing out “any suggestion that I received documents emanating from this apparently criminal ‘hack’ of the Electoral Commission … will be extremely damaging to my professional reputation.”
It is understood similar insinuations were made by Labour Together to The Daily Telegraph.
The Daily Telegraph made its own enquiries with the NSCS and concluded it was safe to publish its article with Holden, which ran on February 28, 2024. The Guardian never ran its piece.
“I believe Labour Together was clearly trying to smear me in the national press,” says Holden. “The whole thing smacked of desperation.”
“The lengths to which the organisation that catapulted Starmer to power was prepared to go to conceal their malfeasance and to investigate a political opponent and his associates, speaks to the undemocratic and authoritarian nature of the Starmer project,” says Feinstein.
“It is shameful and demands an apology and further investigation by relevant political and law enforcement authorities,” he added.
Labour Together did not respond to The National's request for comment.
Holden’s allegations regarding McSweeney’s failure to report Labour Together’s funding have been the subject of renewed reporting in recent days.
The Conservative Party have written to the Electoral Commission demanding it launch an investigation and refer the matter to the police.
