Starmer front-bencher Simons personally involved in journalist ‘spy and smear’ campaign

The scandal of Keir Starmer’s closest supporters spying inconvenient journalists rolls on – and the ‘mainstream’ media are finally paying attention.

The ‘Labour Together’ sabotage outfit undermined Labour’s general election campaign, brought down Jeremy Corbyn, and conned members into choosing Starmer to replace him. But it was also using undeclared donations to spy on journalists that threatened to expose its actions.

Starmer and his former chief of staff

The Canary first revealed months ago that Labour Together had paid investigators to spy on and intimidate author Paul Holden and former Mandela minister Andrew Feinstein. It was ignored by the ‘MSM’. But in February 2026 the group’s spying on two Murdoch journalists was exposed – and suddenly the corporate media took notice.

Labour Together was run by Starmer’s now-former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney then, when McSweeney moved into Starmer’s office, by Josh Simons. Simons is now a Starmer front-bencher – and reacted to the ‘news’ of the spying by saying he was “surprised” and “furious”. Unsurprisingly, his reaction was dishonest nonsense – he had personally participated in the smear campaign on the back of the spying by APCO, a company run by the wife of another disgraced Starmeroid.

The Guardian reported that despite being apparently “surprised” and “furious,” Simon:

had been personally involved in naming them to British intelligence officials and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda.

Simon’s spokesperson told the Guardian the claims weren’t true. But, this time even the Guardian bothered to keep investigating, having seen emails written by SImon himself.

Labour Together shady work

A key plank of Labour Together’s attempt to nobble the journalists exposing it was to link them to establishment bugbear Russia. And, of course, Simons was personally involved in writing to British intelligence services falsely linking both the Murdoch hacks and – especially – Paul Holden to Russia. Holden was in the process of writing his landmark book The Fraud, which subsequently exposed Labour Together’s and Starmer’s dishonesty and dark tactics.

In January 2024, Simons received a 58-page report from APCO after paying the company £36,000 to spy on journalists. He then approached spy agency officials to accuse the journalists of a “coordinated effort to discredit” Labour Together” to undermine Starmer, and Holden of living with a woman with “suspected links to Russian intelligence”.

Every word that has been written about Labour Together has since been shown to be true.

The group’s contract with APCO promised the payment for:

a body of evidence that could be packaged up for use in the media in order to create narratives that would proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together.

Labour Together has also been shown to have been monitoring the Canary, which it had tried and failed to destroy – and Skwawkbox, which at the time was a separate site.

Starmer’s connections to such underhand tactics run deep. A firm run by his Israeli spy has also been exposed paying journalists to publish pro-Starmer content.

Read the Canary’s serialisation of Holden’s book here.

Featured image via the Canary