A Cabinet Office minister used a law firm to smear a journalist who was looking into pro-Starmer group Labour Together, The Telegraph can disclose.
Josh Simons instructed Mishcon de Reya to warn Telegraph journalists that it had “serious doubts about [the] motivation” of Paul Holden, who was writing a book about the Starmerite think tank, and “his credibility should be treated with extreme caution”.
At the time, Mr Simons was head of Labour Together, a think tank that helped propel Sir Keir Starmer to power. He is now a minister in the Cabinet Office.
Sir Keir is already facing calls to explain what he knew about Labour Together’s activities after it emerged that it had paid a public affairs firm to look into the sourcing of a Sunday Times story about the think tank, which resulted in its journalists being falsely described as Kremlin stooges.
In February 2024, Mr Holden, who has spent decades investigating corruption, was working with The Telegraph on a story about £730,000 of donations that Morgan McSweeney, the former director of Labour Together, had failed to declare to the Electoral Commission.
A letter from Mishcon de Reya sent to The Telegraph suggested that the information obtained by Mr Holden, and passed to The Telegraph, “relate to a sensitive ongoing investigation by the UK intelligence services into a hack of the Electoral Commission”.
The implication was that Mr Holden’s information had come from a hack, but in fact he had obtained it by submitting a freedom of information request to the Electoral Commission.
The distinguished law firm – best known for representing the late Diana, Princess of Wales, in her divorce from the King – was being instructed by Mr Simons, who succeeded Mr McSweeney as head of Labour Together. There is no suggestion that Mishcon de Reya was doing anything other than passing on instructions from a client.
Mr Simons is already facing calls to resign for commissioning the report into The Sunday Times, which resulted in highly personal and false information about its journalists being shared in Westminster.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir is facing calls to sever all links with Labour Together. Mr McSweeney, who recently resigned as Sir Keir’s chief of staff, used the group to position Sir Keir as the choice to replace Jeremy Corbyn as party leader. It has also given financial support to several Cabinet ministers.
Mr Holden is the author of six books and was a key witness to the Zondo Commission that exposed corruption in South Africa. He described the allegations that Labour Together made in the legal letter as “despicable”.
He told The Telegraph: “They were desperate to make sure people stopped talking about the money.
“The story I was working on with The Telegraph was based on documents I had obtained from the Electoral Commission after a series of freedom of information requests. It was the most impeccable sourcing you could imagine.
“But they wanted to delay the reporting of the story while they were putting together their dodgy dossier.”
The public affairs company that wrote the report into The Sunday Times, Washington-based Apco Worldwide, had suggested the newspaper had obtained its story as a result of a Russian hack of the Electoral Commission. In fact, a whistleblower had leaked a cache of emails to Mr Holden, who was the source of the Sunday Times story.
When Mr Simons received the 58-page report, codenamed Operation Cannon, he passed a copy to the National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ, which dismissed the claims of Russian interference as baseless.
Mr Simons was contacted by The Telegraph, which was referred to Labour Together and Mishcon de Reya, which both declined to comment.
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