‘Think Labour’ claims it’s not a Labour Together rebrand. It’s exactly that

The ‘new’ right-wing Labour think-tank ‘Think Labour’ has launched with a claim that it’s not just a rebrand of Labour Together. Its CEO Alison Phillips told LabourList that:

ThinkLabour will be an open, collaborative organisation with no interest in factions.

Right.

Labour Together was – and, really, still is – the factional sabotage outfit that used the antisemitism scam and other manoeuvres to throw the 2019 general election and topple Jeremy Corbyn. To fund this, it used massive, undeclared donations from Israel lobbyists.

A ‘unique’ organisation?

In an X post, the group claims that it is:

a unique political organisation dedicated to helping Labour govern confidently, win elections, and deliver lasting change.

But the same thread notes that it is “built out of” Labour Together:

ThinkLabour is built out of Labour Together – but this is much more than a new logo or a change of name. We have a new leadership team, a renewed mission, and a fundamentally different approach. We are open, collaborative, and entirely outward-facing.

— ThinkLabour (@ThinkLabour) May 14, 2026

So it’s not that unique. Nor is it built very far. In fact, it’s exactly the same entity as before. Its website’s ‘privacy’ section hasn’t even been amended and still calls it “Labour Together”. It also notes that its company number is 09630980:

‘Clean skin’?

A search for “Think Labour” on Companies House returns no results. A search for the company number does, however – and it returns a company that is still called… “Labour Together”:

The entity is unchanged – literally, at least so far. What about the people? Boss Alison Phillips, for example. Phillips told LabourList that she was:

delighted to have been made the first CEO of ThinkLabour.

But she was chief executive of Labour Together before the rebrand, and even planned it, so she simply remained CEO rather than being ‘made’ anything – particularly as Think Labour is still, in every legal sense, still Labour Together.

Unlike previous Labour Together directors, Phillips has a relatively low profile regarding Israel – a ‘clean skin’. She’s not quite so clean, however, concerning Labour Together’s scandal of spying on and trying to discredit journalists who were investigating it.

Phillips took over after that scandal and claimed to be “horrified” at it. However, in the same breath, she then amplified claims that the previous management didn’t realise the company it paid to spy on journalists was going to spy on journalists:

As a former journalist and editor, it should come as no surprise that I was horrified that investigators hired by Labour Together would look into the background and sources of reporters even if I am assured that this was not the intention.

Not a ‘clean skin’

But if the CEO is a relatively clean skin on Israel and the antisemitism scam so loved by Labour Together, the same can’t remotely be said for its chair.

Nick Forbes is a former Newcastle council leader resoundingly deselected in 2022 by party members frustrated at rarely seeing him in the ward. His supporters painted the deselection as a “Muslim plot“.

Forbes is an ardent opponent of pro-Palestine protests and called for the police to “throw the book at” anti-apartheid demonstrators. The protesters had dared to call on Newcastle city council not to adopt the grossly unfit, so-called ‘IHRA definition’ of antisemitism. The ‘definition’ doesn’t define anything and is designed to prevent criticism of Israel – which is why Israel supporters demand it everywhere. Including Forbes.

And Forbes didn’t stop there. He was also – alongside Tom Watson and other right-wing, friends-of-Israel horrors – behind a move to make it easier to expel Labour members accused in the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam.

Forbes’ record is at odds with the re-skinned group’s “no interest in factions” claims, too. In 2018, when the party was led by Corbyn, unions planned to democratise the party and give Labour’s overwhelmingly pro-Corbyn membership the power to elect their Labour council leaders, instead of councillors selecting them. Forbes, then also on Labour’s NEC, was among leading opponents of the plan. He dismissed it as “unworkable”, “possibly illegal” and guaranteed to spark “endless infighting”.

Infighting for factional control has been Labour Together’s reason for existence. That does not seem set to change.

Atlantic Council

Another of the ‘new’ group’s directors is Ed Owen. Owens is a ‘senior fellow’ at NATO front-group, the Atlantic Council, which is also closely linked with US intelligence.

Owen has something in common with notorious Labour Together alumnus Morgan McSweeney – they both thought it was a great idea to make Epstein pal Peter Mandelson ambassador to the US. In January 2025, Owen wrote for the Atlantic Council that “big, serious” Mandelson “brings a wealth of experience and expertise”, and was a “bold statement of intent from a British government”. The ‘slug’ for the article states that Mandelson might:

be just what the US-UK relationship needs at this moment.

Serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein first became a convicted paedophile in 2008. Mandelson’s continued close friendship with Epstein had been a matter of public record for years. It received no mention in Owen’s analysis.

Nothing but…

Other directors include a visiting fellow at the security-service aligned King’s College London; a former Bank of England monetary policy official who then moved to a capitalist consultancy; a former Big Finance and Big Pharma staffer who then worked for a right-wing Labour MP. Most worked at Labour Together before the rebrand.

None of this seems to align with the “fundamentally different” organisation to bring “radical” ideas that it’s supposed to be. Not in any good way, anyway. Alison Phillips claims that ‘Think Labour’ is not just a rebrand of Labour Together. Based on the evidence, it seems to be nothing but.

Featured image via the Canary