Morgan McSweeney’s Think Tank Paid £30k to Spy on Journalists
For looking into Labour Together's undeclared funding.
by Harriet Williamson
6 February 2026
A think tank formerly directed by Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney paid a controversial PR firm at least £30k to investigate journalists who were looking into how its undeclared funding bankrolled Starmer’s successful campaign for party leader.
An investigation by Democracy for Sale has found that the rightwing think tank Labour Together, directed by McSweeney from 2017 and from 2022 by Josh Simons, hired APCO Worldwide to investigate journalists from outlets including the Guardian, Declassified UK and the Sunday Times, and to identify their sources.
APCO was hired in 2023 during Simons’ leadership of Labour Together. According to Democracy for Sale, sources close to McSweeney said hiring APCO wasn’t his decision, but didn’t deny his awareness of it.
APCO, which has worked for the UK arm of Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, prepared reports for Labour Together naming journalists Gabriel Pogrund, Harry York, Henry Dyner, John McAvoy and others as “significant persons of interest” and discussing potential “leverage” over other reporters.
One of the journalists targeted, Paul Holden, said this shows “how afraid Labour Together were of proper scrutiny and transparency, and where my investigation was going: the undeclared money that goes to the heart of this current government and implicates not just McSweeney, but sitting cabinet ministers and Starmer himself”.
Labour Together worked to oust Corbyn and undermine his leadership and fell foul of electoral law after failing to report hundreds of thousands of pounds during McSweeney’s tenure as director. It has donated more than £2m to Labour and directly financed the election campaigns of current government ministers.
McSweeney has come under renewed scrutiny this week for his role in pushing for the appointment of former Labour peer Peter Mandelson to the top diplomatic post of US ambassador, despite publicly-available information demonstrating Mandelson’s close relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Harriet Williamson is a commissioning editor and reporter for Novara Media.