Sir Keir Starmer has been involved in several major scandals that each would bring him down in a sane country — Mandelson/Epstein, Palantir contracts, Palestine Action proscription, local elections postponement — and several other scandals involving freebies, cronyism, policy U-turns, and resignations that I won’t have time to go into. Given we are just 18 months into Starmer’s premiership, this must be some sort of scandal record, yet the prime minister is clinging to power by his fingertips.
Much of the scandal revolves around Labour Together, the lobby group that put Starmer into 10 Downing Street. Labour Together has strong ties to the Epstein class and the Israeli lobby, and has been in trouble for failing to declare over £730,000 of donations. It was co-founded by Morgan McSweeney who just resigned in disgrace over the Mandelson appointment.
The government’s ties to the Epstein class are horrific enough, but Labour Together has somehow made things worse with a staggering assault on journalism. Starmer’s team have been going after alternative media for some time, but they made the mistake of going after the corporate media and now they might be in serious trouble. They are facing calls for an inquiry that could prove devastating.
In 2023, Labour Together funded a £36,000 probe into the journalists who were investigating their finances — that would be the dark money I highlighted above. The probe, codenamed “Operation Cannon”, was conducted by APCO Worldwide and targeted Sunday Times reporters Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, who were classed as “persons of significant interest”.
The report focused on the “sourcing, funding and origins” of a November 2023 Sunday Times story on Labour Together’s undeclared donations (as well as other journalistic work). However, it delved into their Jewish faith, family backgrounds, and ideological stances. Claims about their relationships, upbringings, and motivations were circulated among Labour Together figures, including Morgan McSweeney and Josh Simons.
The aim was to make any journalist delving into Labour Together appear untrustworthy and cast doubt on their reporting. In other words, Labour Together was attacking the reputations of journalists to hide the truth. The spying itself would be bad enough, but here is where it gets worse: they were fabricating a scandal against the journalists involving Russia.
Presumably buoyed by their successful antisemitism smears against the left, Labour Together thought they could get away with Russiagate smears against their critics. We truly might be looking at the most dishonest government we’ve ever seen, and coming so soon after the Johnson government too.
A McCarthyite 58-page dossier was produced by former journalist Tom Harper at APCO. As well as the above-named journalists, it covered Henry Dyer from the Guardian, John McEvoy from Declassified UK, Kit Klarenberg from The Grayzone, Paul Holden — an independent journalist, and Matt Taibbi — another independent journalist.
The dossier claimed details from the Sunday Times story likely came from a cyberattack on the Electoral Commission, which was attributed to Russian actors. It seems they were suggesting facts don’t count if they’re uncovered by Russia, but the Russia claim wasn’t even true!
The implication was that Yorke and Pogrund were acting on behalf of the Russian state to destabilise the UK. Laughably, they cited Pogrund’s reporting on the royal family as further evidence of this destabilising. It’s worth emphasising there was nothing in the dossier to substantiate this stuff — it was a work of pure fiction. Remember this, next time they accuse someone of fake news.
There is a particular irony that the government accuses its critics of being conspiracy theorists, but here was APCO inventing a conspiracy theory against journalists. It even submitted that conspiracy theory to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, presumably to continue keeping tabs on these journalists. This invokes memories of Paul Mason’s emails with British intelligence that included journalists/figures in his “pro-Putin infosphere”. It is abundantly clear that if you criticise the government, you are being watched.
What makes the Labour Together spygate scandal particularly egregious is the cronyism. Paul Ovenden (Starmer’s former director of strategy who resigned over separate ethics violations) is married to Kate Forrester who was a director at APCO Worldwide during the investigation. Are we really to believe the cronyism was kept completely separate from Starmer?
Starmer would be nowhere without Labour Together, yet he is claiming that he had no idea what was going on! If we were to take that at face value, his lack of leadership should itself be enough to force his resignation, but Starmer is positioning himself as the man to drain the swamp. It’s ludicrous.
When Morgan McSweeney took charge of Labour Together in 2017, he drew up a plan which involved dividing Labour members into three groups: Ideologues (solid left-wing Corbyn supporters), Instrumentalists (pragmatists focused on winning elections), and Idealists (middle-ground voters swayed by progressive policies but open to moderation).
McSweeney decided Labour Together’s candidate must appeal to all instrumentalists and one-third of idealists in order to become leader. The candidate had to be someone who had served under Corbyn so they could avoid alienating the left (at least initially). Starmer was the perfect choice — his lack of charisma and political experience were not major factors, and his lack of integrity was a major plus! He was someone they could mould.
McSweeney used Labour Together as a vehicle to undermine Corbyn, sharing his three-year plan to seize control of the party with senior Labour figures. Starmer avoided the dirty work so he could position himself as a man of integrity and unity, so he could look prime ministerial.
Labour Together was the incubator for Labour’s 2024 manifesto that I don’t think has a single policy left intact. When Starmer won the Labour leadership, he put prominent Labour Together figures into important roles. These figures have been referred to as his praetorian guard: Morgan McSweeney, Josh Simons, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, Steve Reed, Bridget Phillipson, Shabana Mahmood, Lucy Powell, Lisa Nandy, Jonathan Ashworth, Alison Phillips, Deborah Mattinson, and Stuart Ingham.
Josh Simons is a name that stands out because he replaced McSweeney as director of Labour Together until 2024 and commissioned the dossier on the journalists. He is now the MP for Makerfield and a Cabinet Office minister, but is facing calls for suspension over ethics probes. Given Starmer surrounded himself with Labour Together figures, he is clearly not the man to drain the swamp that he filled.
Let’s not forget all of this is emerging at a time when Labour has just sacked its chief adviser and ambassador to the US over ties to a paedophile ring. Peter Mandelson faces a criminal investigation for “misconduct in public office” and calls for an FCA insider-dealing investigation, regarding confidential info passed to Epstein while serving as business secretary.
As if that wasn’t enough, Starmer has been forced to drop antidemocratic plans to postpone local elections to avoid a Labour wipe out. It has been labelled Starmer’s 14th major U-turn, but honestly, I can’t be bothered to count. Labour will pay the legal costs of Reform UK, after U-turning days before a court case it would have lost. Another court defeat coming so soon after the Palestine Action defeat would surely have spelt the end of Starmer.
We are reaching the point of scandal overload where there is so much going on that the public can’t digest it all. Perhaps Starmer is taking a leaf out of Trump’s book. Don’t worry though, he has come up with a policy to turn things around: he is going to force you to scan your face to use VPNs. That’s what you want from this government, right?The last working-class hero in England. Clio the cat, ? July 1997 - 1 May 2016 Kira the cat, ? ? 2010 - 3 August 2018 Jasper the Ruffian cat ??? - 4 November 2021 Georgina the cat ???-4 December 2025
In LTs lunatic view the Starmerite Guardian looms as a leftwing force, and was attacked as such. In its self defence, which I do not have to hand, The Guardian felt obliged to mention "a book by Paul Holden" The Guardian suppressed that book by not reviewing it. It still suppresses it by not naming it.
'When Morgan McSweeney took charge of Labour Together in 2017, he drew up a plan which involved dividing Labour members into three groups: Ideologues (solid left-wing Corbyn supporters), Instrumentalists (pragmatists focused on winning elections), and Idealists (middle-ground voters swayed by progressive policies but open to moderation).'
Sounds very similar to Stratfor's approach for neutralising activists and movements based on radical critiques. Wonder if McSweeney had some involvement with them?
While its client work was noteworthy, the formula Duchin created to divide and conquer activist movements — a regurgitation of what he learned while working under the mentorship of Rafael Pagan — has stood the test of time. It is still employed to this day by Stratfor.
Duchin replaced Pagan’s “fanatic activist leaders” with “radicals” and created a three-step formula to divide and conquer activists by breaking them up into four subtypes, as described in a 1991 speech delivered to the National Cattleman’s Association titled, “Take an Activist Apart and What Do You Have? And How Do You Deal with Him/Her?”
The subtypes: “radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists.”
Radical activists “want to change the system; have underlying socio/political motives’ and see multinational corporations as ‘inherently evil,’” explained Duchin. “These organizations do not trust the … federal, state and local governments to protect them and to safeguard the environment. They believe, rather, that individuals and local groups should have direct power over industry … I would categorize their principal aims … as social justice and political empowerment.”
The “idealist” is easier to deal with, according to Duchin’s analysis.
“Idealists…want a perfect world…Because of their intrinsic altruism, however, … [they] have a vulnerable point,” he told the audience. “If they can be shown that their position is in opposition to an industry … and cannot be ethically justified, they [will] change their position.”
The two easiest subtypes to join the corporate side of the fight are the “realists” and the “opportunists.” By definition, an “opportunist” takes the opportunity to side with the powerful for career gain, Duchin explained, and has skin in the game for “visibility, power [and] followers.”
The realist, by contrast, is more complex but the most important piece of the puzzle, says Duchin.
“[Realists are able to] live with trade-offs; willing to work within the system; not interested in radical change; pragmatic. The realists should always receive the highest priority in any strategy dealing with a public policy issue.”
Duchin outlined a corresponding three-step strategy to “deal with” these four activist subtypes. First, isolate the radicals. Second, “cultivate” the idealists and “educate” them into becoming realists. And finally, co-opt the realists into agreeing with industry.
“If your industry can successfully bring about these relationships, the credibility of the radicals will be lost and opportunists can be counted on to share in the final policy solution,” Duchin outlined in closing his speech.Tell your story; Ask a question; Interpret generously http://storybythethroat.wordpress.com/tell-ask-listen/
Re: Stratfor: It sounds plausible as a strategy that has been adopted, except ..
Posted by t on February 17, 2026, 7:51 pm, in reply to "Stratfor"
.. when you throw the zionism into the mix which I think holds humongous sway, certainly in British politics atm.
That is also one of the mysterious aspects in McSweeney's resume that doesn't seem to get discussed as much as one would like i.e. his spending time in Israel's kibbutzim in 1994.
on February 17, 2026, 2:56 pm