Keir Starmer opens investigation into Josh Simons over targeting of reporters

Keir Starmer opens investigation into Josh Simons over targeting of reporters PM asks ethics adviser to examine conduct of Cabinet Office minister amid Labour Together scandal fallout UK politics live – latest updates Keir Starmer has opened a formal investigation into a Cabinet Office minister involved in falsely accusing journalists of having links to pro-Russian propaganda. The prime minister’s decision follows revelations in the Guardian that Josh Simons, who was running the thinktank Labour Together at the time, was also involved in telling British intelligence officials that another journalist was “living with” the daughter of a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. Officials were told by Simons’s team that the former adviser was “suspected of links to Russian intelligence”. The prime minister has asked his independent adviser on ministerial standards, Laurie Magnus, to examine Simons’s conduct. Magnus’s involvement was first reported by the Observer. Simons is under growing pressure about his commissioning of an American PR company, Apco, to examine the “sourcing, funding and origin” behind a November 2023 story published by the Sunday Times that raised questions about £730,000 in undeclared donations to Labour Together. He has in recent days claimed he was disturbed to find the Apco report had delved into unnecessary information about one of the story’s journalists. But the emails show how, weeks after receiving the report, he was involved in naming the same journalist in an email to security officials. The emails show Simons pressing the officials to investigate the sourcing behind the article. But despite the accusations, the information was not obtained via a hack and the evidence of Russian involvement was nonexistent. Simons is already the subject of a departmental ethics inquiry by the Cabinet Office, and has faced calls from several politicians that he should be sacked or resign. One source has claimed Simons has already been cleared in the “fact-finding” ...