Morgan McSweeney

Explosive revelations link Labour Together leadership to former IDF soldier

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This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Labour Together logo

Explosive revelations suggest that Labour Together, the think tank closely associated with former Downing Street Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney, now has an ex-IDF soldier in its leadership. The details were uncovered by parliamentary candidate and campaigner Jody McIntyre, who pointed to earlier reporting describing Labour peer Jonathan Kestenbaum as a former Israeli soldier.

Labour Together remains one of the most politically sensitive organisations in the Starmer orbit: the Guardian has described it as closely linked to McSweeney and central to reshaping Labour after the Corbyn period.

McIntyre, who has made a series of exclusive revelations about Labour and its pro-Israel networks, pointed to a 2010 Jewish Chronicle article describing Kestenbaum-nominated to the House of Lords by the Labour Party leadership in 2010- as “an ex-IDF soldier” and a holder of the Israeli army’s “outstanding soldier award”.

The same Jewish Chronicle piece is still available online, but according to McIntyre this history is absent from much of Kestenbaum’s recent public profile. “What, I wonder, will they make of the arrival in their midst of an ex-IDF soldier, a holder of the Israel army’s “outstanding soldier award”? said the article commenting on Kestenbaum’s appointment to the House of Lords.

McIntyre also drew attention to Kestenbaum’s links to Bnei Akiva, a religious Zionist youth movement whose UK branch says it promotes “a religious Zionist worldview” and seeks to play an active role in the development of the state of Israel.

The revelations fit a broader pattern about the Starmer project’s links to pro-Israel networks. In September last year, McIntyre’s investigation into Morgan McSweeney, reporting that the prime minister’s former chief of staff had, in his youth, lived on Sarid, a Zionist settlement built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Ikhneifis.

That same report said Labour Together secretly accepted more than £730,000 (around $930,000) in undeclared donations between 2017 and 2020, and linked part of that funding to businessman Trevor Chinn, a longtime backer of Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel.

Read: What is a former Israeli spy doing in the British Labour Party’s head office?

Labour under Keir Starmer has faced questions over support from donors linked to apartheid-era South Africa and pro-Israel lobbying circles. A 2023 report described Labour’s then new megadonor, Gary Lubner, as a pro-Israel businessman whose family company had profited from South African apartheid. Lubner denied the allegations, but the findings added to concerns about the political and financial networks surrounding Starmer’s leadership.

Labour also faced controversy in 2021 over its recruitment of Assaf Kaplan, a former Israeli military intelligence officer from Unit 8200, into a sensitive “social listening” role. Unit 8200 is Israel’s signals intelligence division, often compared to the US National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ.

Unit 8200 has long been dogged by allegations over its surveillance of Palestinians. In 2014, 43 reserve soldiers from the unit publicly accused it of collecting private information on Palestinians not for security purposes, but to facilitate political persecution, coercion and recruitment of informants.

Lawyers challenging Kaplan’s appointment argued that Labour had placed someone linked to such a unit in a role involving political monitoring inside a major British party.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel's genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism "without qualification". Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
Keir Starmer explains that UK is actively supporting Israel’s genocidal expansion and repeats his previous quotation that he supports Zionism “without qualification”. Keir Starmer said “I said it loud and clear – and meant it – that I support Zionism without qualification.” here: https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/keir-starmer-interview-i-will-work-to-eradicate-antisemitism-from-day-one/
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.

Continue ReadingExplosive revelations link Labour Together leadership to former IDF soldier

Morning Star Editorial: McSweeney’s missing phone reeks of Establishment cover-up

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/mcsweeneys-missing-phone-reeks-establishment-cover

 Prime Minister Keir Starmer (R) and then British ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson during a welcome reception at the ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC., February 26, 2025

… Parliament determined last month that all government communications relating to Peter Mandelson’s disastrous appointment as ambassador to Washington in December 2024 be made public.

That is to allow voters to understand how this first-order misjudgement, naming to the country’s most prestigious diplomatic post a man famous for his overaffection for the rich, twice dismissed from government amid scandal, and most importantly known for his prolonged intimacy with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

…

No communications are likely to have been more relevant to the appointment than those from and to McSweeney, then Downing Street chief of staff, effectively running the government as top aide to the ineffectual Keir Starmer.

McSweeney was mentored by Mandelson as a close associate in Labour’s unending factional wars, with the younger man carrying forward the latter’s obsessive hatred of the left and socialism.

It is clear that he was instrumental in pushing Keir Starmer to name Mandelson to Washington. It is believed that he was charged with asking the now-disgraced New Labour grandee about his relationship with Epstein.

While the Prime Minister bears the responsibility, it appears that this was a calamity engineered largely by McSweeney, whose messages on the subject would therefore be central to any understanding of it.

Yet it is now unclear if we will ever read them. Now, McSweeney announces that his mobile phone was stolen in London last year, a month after Mandelson’s enforced departure from Washington and when it was already highly likely that some form of public accounting for the misjudgement would follow.

The police concur that McSweeney reported the theft at the time it apparently occurred. Giving an incorrect location, and then asserting that he was near a park in east London when he was in fact miles away in Westminster may perhaps be attributable to the stress of the moment.

Failing to advise the police that he was the No 10 chief of staff, and that his device held any number of secret communications of state significance is far less comprehensible, since that omission must have downgraded the police response.

Still odder, No 10 is unable to confirm that the contents of McSweeney’s phone have been fully backed up in line with government regulations for handling official business.

So on this occasion, the stench of cover-up is powerful, however much Starmer may deny it.

…

Read the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/mcsweeneys-missing-phone-reeks-establishment-cover

Keir Starmer discusses Peter Mandelson, Jeffrey Epstein and the UK Labour Party's tradition of excusing and protecting child rapists.
Keir Starmer discusses Peter Mandelson, Jeffrey Epstein and the UK Labour Party’s tradition of excusing and protecting child rapists.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer confirms that he's proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: McSweeney’s missing phone reeks of Establishment cover-up

Morning Star Editorial: Labour Together is key to the Mandelson scandal

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-together-key-mandelson-scandal

 Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (right) and then British ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson during a welcome reception at the ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC, February 27, 2025

LABOUR MP Ian Byrne got to the heart of the Mandelson crisis in the Commons on Wednesday. Namely, he made the point that it is in fact a Mandelson-McSweeney-Labour Together scandal and the measures taken by the government in the wake of the New Labour grandee’s disgrace only scratch the surface of what is needed.

Byrne told MPs that the row over Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to Washington in December 2024 “was not just a catastrophic error of judgment that has caused profound damage to this government’s reputation.

“It was the result of a clique at the top of the party, as we have seen with the Morgan McSweeney and Labour Together scandal, which I and colleagues … have called on the Prime Minister and the general secretary of the Labour Party to launch an independent investigation into.”

Socialist Campaign Group secretary Richard Burgon underlined the point, asking how Mandelson was even considered for the Washington job. 

“It is because it suited the interests of a tiny faction in the Labour Party, funded by big business, which wanted Mandelson at the heart of things in order to shift a Labour government away from the agenda that a real Labour government should have. 

“That is why Mandelson was popular with these people … and that is why, despite his despicable character, despite his greed and his avarice, he was put in that position.”

…

Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-together-key-mandelson-scandal

Keir Starmer discusses the UK Labour Party's tradion of excusing and protecting child rapists.
Keir Starmer discusses the UK Labour Party’s tradion of excusing and protecting child rapists.

Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Labour Together is key to the Mandelson scandal

Morning Star Editorial: Labour Together’s sinister actions must be fully investigated

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-togethers-sinister-actions-must-be-fully-investigated

 Downing Street chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, in Downing Street, central London, ahead of the visit today of President Zelensky, October 10, 2024

…

McSweeney deceitfully claimed that Labour Together was about uniting factions in the party. In reality, it ran a concealed campaign to undermine leader Jeremy Corbyn and force him out of office.

It operated on the understanding that the party membership would never willingly embrace a rightwinger as leader and that the restoration of Labour to what it regarded as its only fit and proper stewards would have to proceed through lies.

Keir Starmer was the instrument of this project, used by McSweeney to pose as a continuer of Corbyn’s policy agenda, but in reality someone prepared to discard all the policies on which he won the leadership and hand the management of the party over to the hardest right-wing faction.

In running this deceit, Labour Together under McSweeney “forgot” to declare nearly three-quarters of a million pounds in donations to the Electoral Commission. It was found guilty of 20 breaches of electoral law.

It was unwilling to submit its funding by multimillionaires to scrutiny while it was secretly backing Starmer’s leadership bid, all the time denying that it was doing so.

All this and much more was revealed in the book The Fraud, by investigative journalist Paul Holden. Labour Together was anxious to divert attention from its law-breaking, since that would undermine McSweeney, by then virtually running Starmer’s Labour.

…

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-togethers-sinister-actions-must-be-fully-investigated

Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves - the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage's chasing the racist bigot vote.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza's hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Labour Together’s sinister actions must be fully investigated

Morning Star Editorial: Mandelson, Trump and the plutocracy: end rule by the rich

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/mandelson-trump-and-plutocracy-end-rule-rich

 President Donald Trump (left) gets a reaction from Britian’s ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson (right), in the Oval Office of the White House, May 8, 2025, in Washington

…

The Mandelson scandal is about Starmer and McSweeney and Labour, but it is also about Donald Trump.

The US president who orders the illegal seizure of a Venezuelan tanker carrying oil to Cuba and says casually when asked what happens to the oil, “I guess we’ll keep it.” Who follows up his mob-style kidnap of the Venezuelan president with a round table of oil execs to decide how to divide the spoils.

Whose so-called peace initiatives, from Congo to Ukraine, are protection rackets in which Washington hints at possible security in return for signing over your natural resources.

Whose special envoy is property developer Steve Witkoff and whose special adviser — playing a key role in discussions on the future of Gaza and holding a seat on the so-called Board of Peace that Trump hopes will usurp functions of the United Nations — is another property developer, his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

US governments have always acted, often illegally and violently, to further the interests of the US capitalist class.

But no US government has blurred the lines between state policy and personal enrichment of the president and his cronies as this one has.

Trump wants the US to “move on” from the Epstein files. No wonder: he features in them heavily. But if we don’t want to be ruled by well-connected sociopaths who see ordinary people and entire countries as their playthings, we have to move on from our “special relationship” with Trump.

Even after the outrageous assault on Venezuela, and the threats to annex Nato member-state territory in Greenland and Canada, Britain assisted an illegal US seizure of a Russian-flagged tanker in the Atlantic and Starmer has offered support for an equally illegal prospective assault against Iran.

This weekend’s Adelante! conference will debate the extraordinary threat Trump poses to the whole of Latin America and to global peace and justice.

Don’t let the powers that be box off the Mandelson scandal. Down with the plutocrats and the sleaze. End the culture of impunity that says some people and some states are above the law.

Force every politician to face it: until we break with Trump, we are complicit in unspeakable crimes. And people have had enough.

I recommend the original article at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/mandelson-trump-and-plutocracy-end-rule-rich

Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of Peace
Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of Peace
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.

Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Mandelson, Trump and the plutocracy: end rule by the rich