“Wrong in numerous important respects”: What PR firm privately told Josh Simons
dizzy: Josh Simons was the MP for Makerfield who gave it up so that Andy Burnham could contest it. Makerfield was considered a safe seat and awarded to Simmons as payback for his work as director, following Morgan McSweeney, of the Labour Together group. Labour Together – since rebranded as ThinkLabour – employed dishonest and evil tactics to have Keir Starmer installed as leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister. Having been handed the seat of Makersfield, Andy Burnham is able to contest the leadership of the Labour Party. The cynical might regard it as a convenient stitch-up. I expect no meaningful change.
Revealed: APCO legal letter warned Simons to cease making “misleading statements” about PR firm’s “incredibly useful” dossier on journalists investigating Labour Together.
By Peter Geoghegan and Khadija Sharife
Josh Simons has had a good couple of weeks. The former Cabinet Office minister – forced to resign over his role in hiring a PR firm to investigate journalists critical of Labour Together – is now being praised for standing aside as Makerfield MP to clear the path for Andy Burnham.
Simons is reportedly “across everything” in Burnham’s campaign and is hotly tipped for a top role in any future administration led by the Greater Manchester Mayor. There’s even talk of a seat in the House of Lords.
But not everyone is so enamoured with Simons.
Democracy for Sale can report that days after Simons resigned from the Cabinet Office – following revelations in this newsletter – he received a legal letter on behalf of the PR firm he had paid more than £30,000 to investigate journalists reporting on Labour Together’s undeclared political donations.
In the lawyer’s letter, reported here for the first time and reproduced below, APCO Worldwide privately accused Simons of making “misleading statements” about his role in the scandal and of changing his story in ways that were “wrong in numerous important respects” – and even of suggesting APCO could do more work for Labour Together.
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APCO did not just dispute Simons’ February 11 statement. His version of events, it said, had “evolved” in the two weeks before his resignation – in ways that were “inconsistent with the facts”.
In his resignation letter to Keir Starmer on February 28, Simons said he “did not know” that the Sunday Times’s Harry Yorke and Henry Dyer of the Guardian had been targeted by APCO, and that once he saw the “reprehensible material” about Pogrund “I took immediate action and removed it.”
APCO flatly rejected this. “No such indication was given to APCO. You did not raise a complaint or objection to the work product delivered. On the contrary, you described it as ‘incredibly useful’ and stated a desire to continue to work with APCO. Your statement ‘What happened subsequently was wrong’ in your resignation letter is inconsistent with your statements to APCO and actions at the time.”
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Recommended: See the original article at https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/wrong-in-numerous-important-respects-josh-simons-apco-legal-letter
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Downing Street chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, in Downing Street, central London, ahead of the visit today of President Zelensky, October 10, 2024