‘Labour Together set private investigators on me’ says author of new exposé ‘The Fraud’

Journalist Paul Holden, the author whose book The Fraud triggered the ongoing scandal around Keir Starmer’s shadowy chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, has accused the Labour Together group McSweeney ran of setting private detectives on him after it found out he was working to expose the decision by McSweeney and Labour Together to lie to the Electoral Commission (EC) about its failure to declare over £700,000 in donations from Israel lobbyists and other rich donors.

Paul Holden: tailed by Labour Together investigators

Paul Holden said he had been “pretty damn scared” when he found out that Labour Together had “set the hounds on me”. McSweeney is a chief architect of the antisemitism scam against Jeremy Corbyn and attempts to destroy the Canary.

Holden also claims that former Labour Together director Josh Simons, now a Cabinet Office Minister, was at the least aware of the group’s decision to set the investigators onto him, telling the Mail that:

‘It was all very worrying. I was told these private detectives were looking into me, my family and my colleagues – all at the request of Labour Together.

I could only assume they were digging dirt to discredit me or my research. The investigators were trying to find out how I was getting all my information – not challenge its accuracy.

The Labour Together move mirrors that of Keir Starmer when, shortly after he took over as Labour leader through a grossly dishonest campaign, a report into the racism of right-wing Labour staff and their efforts to sabotage the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn was leaked to the press.

Rather than investigate the racists and saboteurs – many of whom were subsequently paid off by the party or promoted into senior positions – he spent hundreds of thousands on investigators and forensic computer specialists to try to identify the leakers, then even more on trying to pin the blame on former Corbyn staffers.

Labour Together and Makerfield MP Simons declined to comment.

The Fraud

Paul Holden’s book The Fraud has already forced the resignation of Paul Ovenden, Starmer’s political strategy director after it detailed Ovenden’s sexist and racist remarks about Diane Abbott, Britain’s first Black woman MP.

It exposes the ‘intrigues, stratagems and deceits’ used to get Starmer first into the Labour leadership and then into Downing Street, with McSweeney and Labour Together featuring prominently, particularly in regard to the huge donations from right-wingers and LT’s decision not to fulfil its legal obligation to disclose them promptly.

Labour Together was fined £14,250 after the EC accepted its excuse of ‘admin failures’, but the matter is now in the hands of police and the Crown Prosecution Service.

The decision to withhold disclosure of the donations mirrors that of McSweeney’s boss Keir Starmer to hide several of his biggest donors during the Labour leadership campaign – including the fiercely pro-Israel Trevor Chinn, also one of the Labour Together donors – no doubt because Labour members would not have been fooled for a second into believing Starmer’s thoroughly dishonest election pitch that he wanted to bring unity and build on Corbyn’s policies.

Featured image via the Canary