At Least By Implication

The cancelled local elections are back on. They would already have been budgeted for, so where would that money have gone if they had not been held? The Labour and Conservative Parties should pay Reform UK’s legal costs. Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office is to investigate a Cabinet Office Minister, because this is Britain. Oddly missing so far has been the fact that Josh Simons also deployed APCO against Andrew Feinstein, Keir Starmer’s Independent opponent at the General Election, as reported by Richard Sanders and Peter Oborne last September. And see the latest from Jody McIntyre:

We know that Morgan McSweeney concealed over £730,000 in donations to Labour Together, but some of LT’s money was redirected to another McSweeney project: the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. CCDH “campaigns to deplatform people that it believes promote misinformation”. One of McSweeney’s co-directors at CCDH was Imran Ahmed. In January 2020, Ahmed and Countdown presenter Rachel Riley attended a meeting at Twitter’s London office, where they demanded the removal of broadcaster and politician George Galloway from the platform. Twitter refused. By 2024, CCDH’s “annual priorities” included “Kill Musk’s Twitter”.

Josh Simons, now a Cabinet Office Minister, had taken over at Labour Together and ordered an investigation into the journalists that had exposed McSweeney. The investigation was codenamed “Operation Cannon”. Labour Together, led by Josh Simons, paid £36,000 to APCO Worldwide, a US “public relations” firm. Journalists who had exposed McSweeney were denounced as “destabilising to the UK”. Then, Labour Together passed their “findings” on to British intelligence. Journalists Paul Holden and John McEvoy were named as “persons of interest”. In October 2024, investigative reporter Asa Winstanley had his home raided and documents seized. Starmer’s Labour were cracking down on voices of dissent.

One year after Labour Together “engaged” APCO to gather information on journalists criticising the government, the public relations firm hired a new member of staff, Mark Simpson. Simpson just happened to be a former adviser to Keir Starmer. Did Starmer know all along? Kate Forrester, the wife of Keir Starmer’s then head of communications Paul Ovenden, ran APCO’s London office when it was hired by Labour Together. Josh Simons has branded the claims that he spied on journalists “nonsense”, but the contract between LT and APCO suggests otherwise. The contract instructs APCO to “provide a body of evidence that could be packaged up … in order to create narratives that would proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together.” Morgan McSweeney knew about the investigation. Did Starmer know? 

Forrester, a former adviser to Labour MP Jim McMahon, left APCO last month to join Anacta, a lobbying firm. Anacta is run by Teddy Ryan, the husband of Labour general secretary Hollie Ridley. Last week, Ridley rejected calls for an investigation into Labour Together. Anacta has been dubbed the “first Starmerite lobbying firm”. They were recently hired by Pearson Engineering, a wing of Israeli arms company Rafael based in Newcastle. Pearson Engineering is chaired by Labour peer John Hutton and owned by the Israeli Ministry of Finance.

Imran Ahmed, a friend of McSweeney, is the founder and CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate. In December, the US government imposed a visa sanction on Ahmed for “organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress viewpoints they oppose”. CCDH claims to be a non-partisan organisation, but CEO Imran Ahmed has a history of Labour Party activism, having previously served as an adviser to two current MPs: Hilary Benn and Angela Eagle. Both are listed as parliamentary supporters of Labour Friends of Israel. Last January, a CCDH insider leaked an e-mail exchange between Ahmed and the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC to The Grayzone. When The Grayzone asked Ahmed if he had collaborated with the Israeli government, he said: “We work with all governments.”

In October 2020, Ahmed participated in a US government conference on “hatred” alongside Labour peer John Mann, Conservative peer Michael Gove, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Former Labour MP Luciana Berger presented a section called: “My Story – ‘Under Attack’”. In June 2024, Ahmed e-mailed Efrat Hochstetler, an official at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, thanking her for her “continued support”. Days earlier, he had met with Sawsan Hasson, the Israeli Embassy Minister of Public Diplomacy. Hasson promised to find funders for CCDH. Hasson would do this by introducing Imran Ahmed to Daniel Meron, the Israeli Ambassador in Geneva. Ahmed was grateful, replying: “I would of course be delighted to be connected to any philanthropists who might support our strategic ... solutions.” One day after his appointment with Hasson, Imran Ahmed e-mailed Trevor Chinn to set up a meeting. Chinn was a co-director and key funder of Morgan McSweeney’s Labour Together. McSweeney concealed £739,492 worth of donations to Labour Together “to protect Trevor”.

CCDH’s Chief Operating Officer is Jemma Levene. Levene previously worked as Deputy Director of Hope not Hate, a pressure group which supported Morgan McSweeney in Barking and Dagenham. Hope not Hate’s ex-Political Organiser Liron Velleman is now a convicted paedophile. Labour Together’s current CEO, Alison Phillips, is also a director at Hope not Hate. With recent revelations about Labour Together paying an American lobby firm to spy on British journalists, the question must be asked: Are “Hope not Hate” also implicated?