Reports that McSweeney’s successor Josh Simons will head Burnham’s No 10 policy unit suggest this is part of a wider ruling-class project to reassemble as much of the Mandelson-McSweeney project as possible and ensure it remains the dominating influence in government.
Simons headed Labour Together when it hired private investigators to smear and intimidate journalists who had helped expose its financial misconduct, notably Holden but including the Morning Star’s Andrew Murray.
It would be the height of folly for Burnham to give Simons a political role, whether or not this was the gentlemen’s agreement that saw Simons resign his Makerfield seat to let Burnham run.
It would reinforce the “jobs for the boys” impression of government by clique and confirm that the system looks after its own, no matter how outrageous their behaviour.
It would show that the disgraced think tank is still in charge …
dizzy: Looks like we have no change apart from the front man. I am disappointed in those that abandoned their stated intentions and contributed to achieving this … It wasn’t without warning, was it?
dizzy: Josh Simons was the MP for Makerfield who gave it up so that Andy Burnham could contest it. Makerfield was considered a safe [ed: Labour] 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 [ed: stitched-up, manipulated part of a larger plan]. 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.”
Josh Simons (left) named Paul Holden (centre) and Gabriel Pogrund (right) in emails to NCSC officials. Composite: Guardian Design/Labour Together/Sky News/Simon King/Getty Images
[Guardian] Exclusive: Josh Simons pressed intelligence officials to investigate reporters, in emails described as ‘McCarthyite smear’
A Labour minister who claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” at a PR agency’s work to investigate journalists on his behalf had been personally involved in naming them to British intelligence officials and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda, the Guardian can reveal.
Josh Simons, who was running the thinktank Labour Together at the time, was also involved in telling security officials that another journalist was “living with” the daughter of a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. Officials were told by Simons’ team that the former adviser was “suspected of links to Russian intelligence”.
The extraordinary disclosures are contained in emails that Simons and his chief of staff at Labour Together sent to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a division of the spy agency GCHQ, in 2024. A spokesperson for Simons, a Cabinet Office minister, said: “These claims are untrue.”
The emails, seen by the Guardian, lay out in detail what Simons and his team wrote to intelligence officials in an effort to get them to investigate the sourcing behind a story in the Sunday Times about Labour Together’s failure to disclose political donations.
When informed by the Guardian about what had been communicated about them to intelligence officials, some of those named in the emails accused Simons of orchestrating a “McCarthyite smear” campaign that left them feeling “violated”.
