Politics
Labour Together leaked memo shows paranoia over Canary
A newly-leaked Labour Together report shows that the Starmeroid sabotage group continued to monitor the Canary for years after trying to destroy it. And, Skwawkbox was monitored too – although the geniuses at the shady group failed to spell it correctly. One thing is very clear: Labour Together have been running scared of journalists reporting on their connections and movements.
Evidently, any attention on what they got up to in pursuit of their aims – and how they funded it – clearly made Morgan McSweeney and company fearful of discovery. This is flagged in the preamble of the leaked report, which says that:
recent articles and blog posts…have contained more information than ever before, raising questions and concerns about the sources of the information.
Labour Together’s dossier
The Morgan McSweeney faction‘s frank terror of left media, especially the Canary, was well and truly exposed in Paul Holden’s excellent book The Fraud. That fear triggered McSweeney and his partner in crime Imran Ahmed to try to “destroy” the Canary.
The faction’s fear of left media clearly didn’t stop when the propaganda groups they set up managed to topple Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader by sabotaging the 2019 general election – and came close to forcing the Canary to close.
McSweeney resigned in early February 2026 as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff after years – as Holden exposed – of running covert campaigns against the left and its media. The immediate cause of his resignation was McSweeney’s closeness to disgraced string-puller Peter Mandelson. It was a doomed attempt to protect McSweeney’s boss Keir Starmer – but the scandals have just kept on oozing out ever since.
This week, Rupert Murdoch’s Times ‘broke‘ the news that McSweeney’s outfit Labour Together paid tens of thousands to private investigators to spy on two Times hacks. It wasn’t breaking; it wasn’t even news. The Canary and others had already reported on it – and had reported six months earlier on Labour Together’s spying on a number of left-wing journalists, as well as on author Paul Holden and former Mandela minister Andrew Feinstein.
Something bothering you, lads?
The newly-leaked report shows just how much Labour Together was discomfited by what the Canary and others were digging up. The memo begins with some anxiety over who is watching their every move:
For both left- and right-wing influencers, Labour Together and CCDH sit at the centre of a nexus of conspiracy theories that involve government attempts to suppress free speech, increasing state censorship, the sabotaging of left- and right-wing leaders, and pro-Israel advocacy, among many other accusations.
Conspiracy theories? What is it about the Canary and other independent journalists that so bothers Labour Together? Perhaps that we’re not in the pockets of billionaires or politicians, and actually report the truth as we find it?
The memo also confirms that the McSweeney group continued to monitor the Canary – with particular attention to how it exposed Imran Ahmed’s sock-puppet groups. This was going on long before Holden’s book was published, though Holden features too:
The report was prepared for Labour Together in December 2023, marked “Strictly Private and Confidential”. Oh well. After introducing the Canary as one of the main outlets paying attention to Labour Together’s actions from the start of Starmer’s diseased tenure as Labour leader, and to Labour Together’s links with the Israel lobby, it then turns to the exposure of McSweeney and Ahmed’s shamelessly named fake-news campaigns [emphases added]:
December 2020: The far-left website The Canary published an article which focused on the Stop Funding Fake News campaign following its successful campaign urging corporations to stop advertising on The Canary website.
The article focused on the connection between SFFN and Morgan McSweeny [sic]. McSweeney was identified as one of the directors, alongside Imran Ahmed, and as Keir Starmer MP’s Chief of Staff at the time. The article noted celebrity Rachel Riley’s support for both SFFN and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
The article accused CCDH of being linked to a “number of figures on the Labour right” and suggested that McSweeney and Ahmed had been operating both campaigns for longer than the organisations were “willing to admit”.
Labour Together is briefly mentioned as an organisation that shares its address with CCDH and is accused of being a grouping of Blue Labour and Labour Right figures – including Lisa Nandy at the time.
Who is Imran Ahmed?
Like McSweeney, Imran Ahmed is one of the most shadowy figures on the Labour right. Initially a staffer for right-wing Labour horror Angela Eagle and desperate to protect Eagle from deselection by angry party members, Ahmed was at the centre of fake claims that left-wingers threw a brick through Eagle’s office window. The whole thing was made up. The window was not Eagle’s. There was never any evidence the left had anything to do with it. There was never even a brick. But following a pattern that was soon to become characteristic of Labour Together’s operations, the corporate and state press were more than happy to amplify the false claims fed to them.
Ahmed then went on to co-found the Orwellian smear factory ‘Stop Funding Fake News’ (SFFN) to target the Canary. When that was no longer needed, SFFN morphed into the equally misnamed ‘Centre for Countering Digital Hate’ (CCDH). Ahmed moved to the US and touted CCDH’s services to the anonymous wealthy and powerful to attack their opponents using similar tactics to those used against the Canary. He also specifically courted Israel and its donors, eager to target Palestine and the anti-genocide movement. Author Paul Thacker has accused Ahmed of working with or for UK intelligence services.
Given Ahmed’s links to nefarious groups and his closeness to McSweeney, it’s clear – and no surprise – that any scrutiny was unwelcome.
Shit out of luck
The Canary features numerous times in the memo, each time as a thorn in the McSweeney-Ahmed axis’s side. In each case, the information exposed by our journalists about Labour Together’s activities and personnel has subsequently been proven to be true, particularly by Holden’s book, which was serialised by the Canary in the autumn of 2025.
When Jeremy Corbyn was still leader of the Labour party and the left media were central to his prospects of success, Morgan McSweeney told his fellow saboteurs, “kill the Canary before the Canary kills us“. They came close, but they are now disgraced relics while the Canary is thriving more than ever. And, for good measure, so is Sk(w)awkbox.
Featured image via the Canary