Why was a Labour campaign group spying on journalists?

This is a Global Player original podcast. There will be a cabinet office um investigation um into the allegations and quite right to. Rydyn ni'n ei wneud rhywbeth o'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud. Not for the first time announcing another Cabinet Office inquiry, and not for the first time saying I knew nothing about it.

The story that's emerging about what Labour Together did is complicated and pretty outrageous. We're going to try and talk you through what we understand and where it could take us. Welcome to the news agent. The news agents. It's John. Yay. Yay. Yay a bit. Hello, welcome back. Thank you very much. How many continents have we done? How many weeks? Uh I've been in Australia and I have been in South Africa. So Oceania.

and uh Africa in the past three weeks. Those poor Asians, those poor Europeans, not this time. Anyway, I'm glad that while I was away, nothing much happened. So okay, we're gonna start by talking about Labour Together and these extraordinary allegations about work that that body commissioned. And just to go back a step Labour Together is essentially a sort of working group, a campaign group. Think tank. A think tank that

got Kirst Armor to power. In other words, they do the groundwork. They say, This is how people are voting. This is what you need to do. These are the places you need to target. This is what's going on in this part of the country. It's not going on in that part of the country. And they paved the way, well they did pave the way essentially for the rise to power of Labour. And of course the eminent Grees of Labour Together was Morgan McSweeney, who until last week was the chief of staff of the

Of the Downing Street operation and the closest person to Keir Starmer. And what happened was the Sunday Times and their brilliant investigative journalist Gabriel Poggran. Got this story about how Monies that had been raised hadn't been declared in the proper way because of the status of Labour Together that should have been declared and what was going on there, and it was pretty difficult piece of news for Morgan McSweeney to handle.

So this is back, we should say, November of twenty three. Exactly. Ahead of the election, six months ahead of the election. Exactly. And what happened then? If you go if you cast your mind back to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and the l hack of the Democratic National Committee computers and how suddenly there were these embarrassing emails.

Labour Together thought something very similar was happening, that the Russians had wanted to discredit Starmer and Labour and the project game elected, and that they had got hold of all this information. And it wasn't the good journalism of Gabriel Pogrand, it was the Russians who done it, and Gabriel Pogrund was the willing agent of this. So they contracted this American public affairs company, APCO, to do an investigation into how this story came about. Was it Russian interference?

But it went way, way further than that, into Gabriel Poggran's background, his religion, his faith, his upbringing, and sort of doing a real dirty ops job. On a bloody good journalist. It's a very odd place to start, isn't it? When that story appeared, it was about Seven hundred and thirty thousand pounds worth of undeclared fundraising. In other words, it's exactly the kind of work that investigation

newspapers, journalists would do about a kind of newly emerging body. You know, are they who they say they are? What kind of money's changing hands? And yet the response of Labour Together was not to say, let us look into our own spending or let us look into party funding or let us look into what has actually been going on. The answers you say was to pull in a PR firm to examine the backgrounds and motivations. They said they were looking to establish the fact.

Now look, if you're being generous, you could say we don't understand where any of the stuff came from, any of the sources, where were you getting these numbers from? Has there been a massive data hack? Do we need to do something that checks that out? But as soon as you start getting stuff back from APCO, who as I say paid thirty-six thousand pounds to investigate, as soon as the stuff that's coming back is about individual journalists

About their religion, about what you perceive to be their motivations. Don't you stop and go, we're coming perilously close here, to putting a sort of totalitarian thumb on a free press. Because we're all allowed to investigate, you know, not just journalists but members of the public. We're all allowed to ask questions. We're all allowed to kind of go, I don't understand what that chain was and where that money came from and I think we're allowed to do that.

without having aspersions cast over us that we are working for foreign agents. No. uh journalism is about asking uncomfortable questions and being a pain in the arse to people in power, whether they be conservative or Labour. And I think that, you know, frankly, if we had heard that a right wing think tank had done that

kind of investigation and had asked someone to investigate a journalist who was working for The Guardian or whatever it happened to be, you'd say this is outrageous. I mean, there are Nixonian Overtones to this. You know, Richard Nixon famously had his enemies list, and he famously he even there was one stage where it was thought he took out a contract.

On a journalist, investigative journalist called Jack Anderson, and there was a whole elaborate plot by which Jack Anderson was gonna be bumped off. Now it's not as bad as that, but it's that sort of thing where you're starting to say that because a journalist has come up with a story that is not helpful to you, then we must take action against them. That is outrageous. That is not accepting that in this country we have a free press.

And the journalists are meant to be pains in the arse to people in authority. Yeah. And a curious twist in this story is that at the head of APCO was senior director Tom Harper, who was formerly of the Sunday Times. He was employed by the Sunday Times. So I don't know, was there an animus, a broigus, was there something personal going on, or did he think that he understood how the Sunday Times

was operating. But I think to start that investigation into the individual journalists, it wasn't just Gabriel Pogrand, his co author of this book, it was Harry York as well. I think that's where it starts getting really uncomfortable. And I also think that the reason this is now complicated is because The uh person who commissioned this investigation at the time was Josh Simon, used to be at Labour Together. He is now not just a Labour MP, but also a junior minister.

And so Well he's a Cabinet Office Minister and there's going to be a Cabinet Office inquiry. Which might also kind of make you raise the odd eyebrow. But the Cabinet Office Minister is now sort of investigating himself.

Well, we've put a branch out to Josh Simons, as you can imagine. Very welcome on the podcast. We'd love to hear his side of the story. And the way he has explained it is he said, Oh, it went too far, it was overreach. You know, I commissioned something that just checked it wasn't foreign Russian interference. You can see why I did that, but it was overreach when it went into all those quarters. I guess the problem is

Nobody said that at the time, right? This is now eighteen months ago. Nobody said that at the time. Did anyone say we've got to throw away the whole thing because I think it's gone too far? So I think that's the first question. The second question is. And it is kind of where journalism always takes you. Couibono. Who is profiting now from all this coming out? Why is it important that it's coming out now? Because Morgan Matsweeney has just left, is it a sense that those who

actually never believed in the Morgan McSweeney sort of project or victims of it. Might have been victims of it, are now shoving all this stuff out, right? So I think it's fair that we ask about the timing. It's fair that we look at Questions of who stands to gain from all this coming out now? Is it more about unsettling the Prime Minister again? Now, Kirst Armer.

I think, you know, probably didn't know anything about this. Who knows? But it's not a great look again for the head of the government to go, Oh oh, I don't know. I knew nothing about it. Because Curiosity. And actually what you really want to hear was, even if I didn't know about it I'm so on top of this now. I'm absolutely gonna get this bang to rights. I mean, he's opening the investigation. Fair cop, you know, he's saying there'll be an investigation.

I don't know what an investigation looks like as you say the Cabinet Office is going to look at the Cabinet Office. Let's see what the Cabinet Office finds. Yeah, and and that's the problem, isn't it? I mean for Keir Starmer Okay, Keir Starmer's saying I knew nothing about it and as you say, Emily, probably absolutely had no idea and this has all come as a shock to him. But it comes after

Peter Mandelson and oh I didn't know that much about the relationship with Epstein and the uh Matthew Doyle which you covered on the episodes while I was listening in South Africa last week and you know, all of that and why wasn't that properly investigated. So It ends up that Keir Starmer is looking a little bit hapless again when what he needs to project is strength and I'm on top of this.

And of course there are questions for the Labour leadership because yes, Morgan McSweeney was a key figure in Labour Together. Steve Reed, Housing Secretary. Uh Lisa Nandy, culture secretary. They're very close to Labour together. And so y there are a lot of characters on the board are on the board. A lot of characters are in a pretty vulnerable position.

over their relationship with labour together when something, as you say, pretty heinous went on. Yeah. So I reached out to somebody fairly close to number ten and I said, This doesn't look good, right? This looks pretty dodgy. And this person said, Look, if the agency overreacted without being asked to, I guess it's slightly less dodgy, but in the current environment,

It looks like there's another scalp to come. In other words, you know, either a Josh Simon or somebody like that. And I said, if the agency had overreached Wouldn't you say that at the time, you know, my my point just now. And this person said, Exactly, as ever, trying to say nothing much to see here won't work. But it's also true, he this person says, Anything that looks dodgy gets amplified now since Peter Mandelson. So

The Peter Mandelson thing has I think opened the floodgates for people to start thinking things that they didn't think before. And it's about proximity, it's about collusion, it's about corruption. These are all big words, you know, but as soon as you Start thinking did he know about this without saying. Then that question becomes more applicable to any of the other scandals that start to emerge. I suppose in journalism I've always pretended to believe in cock up rather than conspiracy.

And I do think it is uh you know, do I think there has been corruption In government over Mandelson's appointment, no, there was a distinct lack of curiosity. Matthew Doyle should I mean there was just bad decisions made and I think you made the point on the podcast last week that you know getting a

a seat in the House of Lords should not be the consolation prize because you've been fired. But that was what was happening and there was just not enough You get this sense that it's so difficult governing right now, that there are so many decisions being made, that you're not really on top of anything, and y you're running as fast as you can just to stand still.

And I just think this is the sort of uh I don't know whether we've become ungovernable or whether Keir Starmer is uniquely unsuitable to doing that. But it just feels that this is a government that just keeps getting blown off course. You know, yeah uh on Saturday he makes a v you know, an important speech at the Munich Security Conference, but by Sunday we're talking about Labour Together and this kind of the scandal that's

unfolded. He can't seem to buy a break where he sticks to a topic that he wants to stick to. I thought it was really revealing actually that the interview he gave the son said, I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna fight the next election And I almost felt whatever you think of Keir Starmer, that's what's been missing in this whole coverage for for the last few weeks is a sense of somebody saying, Look, this is all just noise. I'm getting on and I'm gonna stay here and I'm gonna do this.

And frankly, I mean, the fact that people are still talking about the runners and riders of who's gonna replace him, when there clearly isn't anyone that is kind of vaguely suitable or vaguely possible right now

ready to either wield the knife or or do the job, I think should tell us that actually he's not gonna go. I don't think he is gonna go now. I mean I I genuinely believe that the rest of the cabinet or the rest of the runners and riders haven't got their shit together to do anything that will remove him and I think that is

That is the default position of Labour. You know, it was it was thus under Gordon Brown. There were a lot of people around Gordon Brown who didn't think very much of him, didn't think he was up to the job. I mean they came at him with spoons rather than knives. You know what I mean? Sort of quarter pistols. Yeah, kind of scooping a little bit, but there was nothing that was gonna hurt him. And sure enough, he did. He he stayed in the job, he went on to fight the next election, he lost.

You know, brought in Peter Mandelson to try and shore up support. ironically, but he stayed in it for the whole course until that election date was set. Look, there is such a cultural difference between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. And broadly speaking I think it is this. That the Labour Party venerates its losers and abhors its winners. And you know, Tony Blair won three successive general elections. Is he a hero of the Labour movement? Is he hell?

The Labour movement loves Michael Foote, it loves Neil Kinnock, it loves Gordon Brown losing the twenty ten election, it loves, you know, Corbyn. It doesn't like winners and it doesn't like Keir Starmer because he's been in power and let them down. And what Labour likes is the pureness of principle, not the mucky business of governing. And I kind of think that it's got to a ridiculous extent now.

where the hyperventilation of so many Labour backbenchers and even cabinet ministers, a kind of jocking position'cause you've had a bad week of headlines, governing is tough. You know, you've got to weather the storm and that's why I think Star I I think you're right, Emily. I think Starmer's absolutely spot on to say, Yeah, you know what, I'm staying. I'm not going anywhere. It's a tough job, I'm getting on with it. I mean to your point, Tony Blair for Labour

should in sort of theory be Thatcher for the Conservatives. Completely. But there is absolutely no way that he is canonised in the way that Thatcher is for the Tories. And I suppose part of that is that endless sense of disappointment that Labour has with its own sort of leaders, really, you know, the ones that have have gone on to sort of change the world, which is This sense of like, we thought we were getting this, but that's what we've got.

We thought Tony Blair would be this but it turns out that he was, you know, messianic about Iraq or greedy for money or w you know, a lot of the stuff that has now followed Tony Blair out of office. And I think the thing that's following Starmer is this sense that he was a man with a plan and actually he looks quite hapless in government. Now, part of this is As we've said before, you know, if you don't spell out your story, if you don't take the opportunity at every time to say

This is what I've done for children in poverty, this is what I've done for defence spending, this is what I've done to change laws on this, this is what I'm looking at now, then it's kind of your fault, you know. If people are filling the vacuum in because you haven't been able to tell them, then I think that is a problem. But I also think that we are getting to a point where Everyone feels disposable, expendable.

Right. Every everyone got a problem, get rid of it, we'll have someone else. Yeah. And that's what the Tories did. And I think that if Labour go down the same route. of you know, having three Prime Ministers in the next, you know, year or two, it'll be catastrophic for the party. I just think it I did think from a few thousand miles away kind of. This has all gone absolutely bonkers. I took a fourteen hour flight from Australia

to Johannesburg last Monday when there was the kind of coup that wasn't. And I the day started with Keir Starmer's Prime Minister and the day ended when I landed. There was no Wi Fi on the plane and he was still Prime Minister. Nothing had changed except everything had changed.

And it was just this kind of whole there was a coup, it was breathless, he was going, there was gonna who was gonna rise up and then the cabinet comes out and says, We support him and it all gone away again, all in the space of one flight. You think this is a bit kind of everything is moving too fast. Just everyone take a breath. We'll be back in a moment. Welcoming the Leader of the Opposition. The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Day. Listen on our free. player app or the LBC app.

Leading Britain's conversation. The news agents.

No, I don't have confidence in her. She hasn't got any sort of accountability there at the DOJ. When I asked her specifically who redacted Leslie Wexner's name from the one document that mattered, she couldn't give me an answer. She wouldn't give me an answer.

But ultimately it's her who is responsible for the document production according to our law. The Attorney General. It's not Todd Bland that is Thomas Massey. He's a Kentucky representative and he is Republican and he is one of the leading voices in Congress. And he has very direct questions right now for the head of the Department of Justice, Pam Bondi, who he says is still sitting on stuff she needs to release.

Now, we think we've got three million or so pieces of information from this latest tranche of the Epstein files. That is half the number that were submitted. There was, I think, six million that they were talking about. LED ESC in November, when the law by Congress was passed to to release the Epstein files. And according to some of the reporting that's come out recently, clearly on Channel Four News,

Even that is a tiny percentage of what we know overall to be the communications between Epstein and his ring. I mean his paedophile ring, his consort. Over that sort of thirty year period. And what you're seeing now is pressure, political pressure. from both sides, which is really critical, I think, here, that is taking the administration to task and saying

Don't just give us something and then wash your hands with it. Tell us what you're gonna do now. And even some of the stuff that has been published has been so heavily redacted that you kinda think, Well, hang on, I can't make head nor tail of what it is that has come out and so you've had the ridiculous situation where, you know, the identities of girls, young women now who were sexually abused, have been released

Which was against the law because they were protected in law from having their identities revealed, whereas some billionaires have had their names covered up. So the whole process has been a mess.

I'm Pam Bondi her Valentine's Day present to America was to say, That's it, no more. That's it. We're done now. We've released everything we've got. And there was going to be nothing more released. We're drawing a line under it. And you know this administration didn't want the files released in the first place. Congress then overruled the president and said

Screw you, we've got to release these to the public. Now we've got Pam Bondi saying you've had everything you're gonna get and it's not satisfying anyone. And the other thing that Pam Bondi did, which was just extraordinary, was to publish a list of famous names. of people whose names appear in the Epstein files, whether they were relevant or not. So for example The singer, Janice Joplin, who died of a heroin overdose, her name is in the Epstein files.

Epstein was like sixteen when Janice Joplin died. She played no role in any of this, but there are certain names, so for example, Biden's children are named. But none of Donald Trump's children. But Donald Trump's children are named in the files as well. Why hasn't those names been released? Why have others been made public? It smells it just.

Smells absolutely rotten. It's not a good look for Pam Bondi at the moment, particularly if I take you back to those scenes last week where she was confronted by Epstein survivors and their relatives. who all raised their hands when they were asked by the Democratic representative if they'd managed to get time with Pam Bondy. Had she responded to any of their requests for meetings or time. And Bondy stood with her back to them.

as they all said that they had tried and failed to get her to sit down. Now look Her response is, this is performative. This is theatre. This isn't getting to the bottom of things. And frankly, I think she'd have a point. I mean the thing was staged. I think she'd have a point in saying that. if it didn't look as though she was trying at every possible moment

to stop the truth getting out. So when you hear from her deputy, Blanche, Tom Blanche, that there is no real impetus to start digging up more details and looking for more prosecutions, you kind of have your head on your hands and you're thinking, why not? Every reporter, every journalist.

And many members of the public are right now sifting through these files and saying, Well that doesn't look good. Are they calling him in for questioning? Well that doesn't look great. Have they called her in for questioning? Why isn't the Department of Justice having that same gut response to what we're all reading? Why aren't they sitting there saying, this stuff is appalling, right? We we don't want to be on the side

of a paedophile cover up. We don't wanna be on the side of a paedophile ring conspiracy. Why aren't we getting to the bottom of this? And this was the point actually that Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who was giving a speech in Berlin, raised just this weekend. It's just shocking uh to see all of this and we cannot let it go and we cannot allow them to desensitize us to this. It does not surprise me.

That the same authors of the quote unquote anti cancel culture movement, right, all of these people who have been trying to tell us. That basic humanity and upholding standards of dignity is cancel culture. It's not surprising to me that they say, oh, you can't. Speak out against this or that. You can't hold that person accountable because it's cancel culture. Now I'm sure they don't want us. To hold pedophilia accountable.

And they think having an anti pedophilia stance would be cancel culture. That's the erosion in the culture, morality that that is being hinted at here when Pam Bandi says there's no more work here to be done. Really? You are the attorney general of the United States of America and you don't want to hold any one of these pedophiles accountable, resign or be impeached.

Well it wasn't just that Pam Bondi said we've got to move on from this. I mean one of the most memorable quotes from that is kind of exercising petulance when she was up before the committee last week was when she said, Look, can we just move on from this? The stock market is over fifty thousand now. So oh d why are you talking about child rape when we're all getting rich? And I think that is saying the quiet bit out loud. Are you really saying?

that rape is okay because we're all getting wealthy as hell because the stock market Is rising unless you're not going to be able to almost Yeah, it's like look over here. Don't look at that, look over here. Follow this finger. Forget that hand. Look at that hand. That's what she's doing, isn't it? And presumably she's got that from Trump. I mean what Trump has masterfully managed to do over the years is Just sort of

Spit back, right? He never really apologises, he never really explains. He just sort of brazens it out. She's trying to do that now. And it's just not really working. Look, if Donald Trump isn't going to apologize for posting a truth social video which depicts Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes. I mean Pam Bondi doesn't feel much compunction to apologize before a committee But she's still covering for him. But she's still covering and th there is new reporting.

From the FBI in the New York Times today, which does reveal very specifically Trump's own role in a matter of sexual abuse with an Epstein victim. It is all laid out there. And so you can't help feeling that she is now part of their station. I mean, wittingly, unwittingly, who the hell knows? She's now covering for her boss, who remained in contact with Geoffrey Epstein, we now know, longer than he said, and is accused in these files in FBI depositions of sexual abuse.

You know, you've just got to ask, is this politically smart? I mean leave aside the distasteful nature of you know, the idea that you are not revealing this stuff or you are covering up. But is it politically smart to do that? And I can't help thinking that when you have got Donald Trump

So at odds with public opinion in America, where public opinion is driving this. Those Congressmen and Women on the Republican Party didn't suddenly discover a backbone because they wanted to take on Donald Trump. They were aware That the people, their voters, were saying, Come on. Let us see what's in these files. I think that You know, Donald Trump when he told that female reporter, Quiet Piggy, when he turned on Caitlin Collins saying, You never smile

I mean, all of this stuff. Donald Trump is desperate to move on from it. We're not looking the other way. We're still focused on the Epstein files. They are still the headline. Well, the fact that you have to ask whether it's politically sensible, I think, is brought into sharp focus by the fact that we heard from Thomas Massey, Republican.

Then we heard from Macasio Cortez. Now we're gonna hear from Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean she was the Trump fangirl until about four months ago, and now she knows exactly where she's coming from. Just listen to this.

One day I get a phone call from the presidents in September and he is so mad at me. And he's yelling at me and he's angry at me and the fact that he's like, you're supporting Rand Paul Jr. and he's chewing me out for signing my name on Thomas Massey's discharge petition to release the Epstein file. And I'm trying to tell him, Mr President. They they say you did nothing wrong. This needs to come out. And so we're having this argument.

And he tells me on this phone call, he's like, Marjorie, my friends will get hurt. That is Marjorie Taylor Green, a Republican congresswoman. Spelling out for us, I mean what you've just heard is her saying that Trump said his friends would get hurt. If that doesn't look like a cover up of a paedophone, I don't know what does. And the whole irony of this is that we're talking about the cover up of a pedophile ring, right? The point of releasing the papers was to get to the bottom

Of the cover up. But now it just looks like there's a cover up of the cover up as well. We will be back in just a moment.

The news agents. Before we go, Proud Mum, Liztross, has finally got Her picture with Donald Trump. She's with him at his golf resort in Palm Beach. They're both in a sort of Valentine's Red, maybe it's a MAGA red, and she has captioned it Donald Trump right now.

About everything. She's tagged the president on Twitter. It should be said that I have been through Truth Social, which is Donald Trump's platform, and we know what an inveterate poster he is. Weirdly, he hasn't thought it worth mentioning that Liz Trust. came to see him. I can't think why, although I do remember when Liz Truss spoke at the CPAC conference.

They kind of had the caption on their closed circuit TV. UK Prime Minister, September to October twenty twenty two. So you know, the the brief period of premiership. Oh, it's a great Aston, isn't it? It's a great Aston. It's a perfect Aston. Anyway, they are a very happy couple, or at least Liz is delighted with that picture. It's an extraordinary picture actually. If you zoom in, it is an extraordinary picture.

Extraordinary picture of him. I mean Old? Quite odd. So what what are you saying? Valentine's Day at the old people's home? Your words, not mine. We'll be back tomorrow. We'll see you then. Bye bye. Bye. This has been original