Labour Together ‘making clean break’ after former director resigns as minister

Labour Together ‘making clean break’ after former director resigns as minister Thinktank’s board distances itself from Josh Simons’ decision in 2023 to hire lobbying firm to investigate journalists A Labour thinktank that helped Keir Starmer into No 10 has said it is making a “clean break” from the past after its former director, Josh Simons, resigned as a minister over a report falsely linking journalists to a “pro-Kremlin” network. The board of Labour Together distanced itself from Simons’ decision in 2023 to hire a lobbying firm to investigate Sunday Times , Guardian and independent reporters who were looking into its failure to declare more than £700,000 in donations. Simons, who led Labour Together at the time and commissioned the £36,000 report, stepped down as a Cabinet Office minister on Saturday over the scandal. However, Labour Together’s activities remain under scrutiny, with the Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, saying Starmer should cut ties with the thinktank and return its donations. “Simons has resigned so it’s clear Labour Together is utterly finished as an organisation,” she said. “Keir Starmer must tell us immediately if he will now end Labour Together’s links with his government and return the tainted money they’ve donated.” A number of Labour MPs have said they were disappointed with Starmer’s response to the scandal. Karl Turner wrote on X that it was “spot on” that there should be a wider investigation into the activities of Labour Together, while Clive Lewis said Simons should have resigned or been dismissed weeks ago and the delay “speaks volumes”. Simons was in charge of the organisation when it commissioned Tom Harper, a lobbyist from Apco and a former Sunday Times journalist, to investigate the source of stories about Labour Together’s failure to declare £730,000 in donations. The reporting failures at Labour Together between 2017 and 2020 happened under Morgan McSweeney, who later became Starmer’s chief of staff, and led to fines from ...