Inside Labour Together’s secret battle against Jeremy Corbyn | Documents disclosed to Corbyn expose covert efforts by Starmer’s former chief of staff to combat the British left

Newly released documents reveal the inner workings of Labour Together and its role in covertly undermining Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party.

The documents were disclosed to Corbyn in response to a subject access request. They contain emails from Labour Together’s two key figures Morgan McSweeney and Josh Simons.

McSweeney went on to be Keir Starmer’s chief of staff while Simons became a cabinet minister until he resigned following revelations that he had hired a reputation management firm to “proactively undermine” journalistic investigations into Labour Together, McSweeney and Sir Keir Starmer.

Simons subsequently vacated his Makerfield constituency seat for Andy Burnham.

Internal documents detail how Labour Together under McSweeney’s watch (2017-20) conducted polling of the Labour membership to monitor its views on the incidence of antisemitism in the party.

This polling allowed McSweeney and his allies to track responses to the antisemitism narrative that they were simultaneously helping to sustain by placing arguably alarmist stories in the media.

The documents further detail how The Canary media outlet was highly trusted among Labour members and identified as a political challenge because it defended Corbyn amid antisemitism accusations.

The Canary was subsequently targeted by the McSweeney-linked Stop Funding Fake News campaign with an advertiser boycott, which helped to diminish its revenue.

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The results of two polls conducted in November 2018 and July 2019 suggest the Labour membership was sceptical of the “antisemitism crisis” narrative.

For instance, 76% of respondents believed in November 2018 that the crisis was either “deliberately exaggerated” or effectively non-existent and being “hyped” to damage Corbyn and protect Israel.

This dropped marginally to 71% seven months later despite a firestorm of media coverage.

McSweeney appeared to be displeased with the poll results, writing in one 2018 email that “there is nothing at the moment to suggest that Corbyn is challengeable before 2022 but equally there is every reason to be optimistic about what happens next”.

He added that Corbyn’s “absolute numbers are still very high (68%) particularly given his dreadful performance on Brexit and antisemitism”.

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When read against other emails and Labour Together’s polling, the briefing note points to concerns about how The Canary was undermining the antisemitism narrative that McSweeney and his allies were covertly helping to inflame in this period.

In March 2019, McSweeney and his ally Imran Ahmed would launch the Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) campaign, which sought to demonetise The Canary by pressuring companies to withdraw advertising from its website.

While being led by factional Labour insiders, the SFFN campaign presented itself as a project run by committed grassroots activists who were concerned with the proliferation of “fake news”.

Interestingly, the internal briefing note, which appears to have been a precursor to the SFFN campaign, made no mention of the accuracy of The Canary’s reporting.

The emphasis was on its political influence, strongly suggesting the subsequent campaign was initiated in response to The Canary’s challenge to the political ambitions of Labour Together, onto which claims of “disinformation” were grafted.

Indeed, McSweeney reportedly told Labour Together colleagues: “Destroy the Canary or the Canary destroys us”.