Think tank working with Starmer under fire for spying on journalists

London - There is no peace for Keir Starmer: with Parliament closed this week, the British prime minister could have hoped for quieter days than last week, when he appeared to be one step away from a forced resignation due to the scandal over the appointment of Peter Mandelson, closely linked to paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, to the prestigious post of ambassador to Washington.

A new scandal today closely affects some of Starmer's closest associates and raises new doubts about the premier's choices and judgement. Indeed, it has emerged that Labour Together, a centrist think tank that favoured Starmer's rise in the party and his victory at the ballot box in 2024, had commissioned an American PR firm, Apco Worldwide, to report on a scoop by Sunday Times journalists in 2023.

The think tank had not liked the newspaper's revelations that the Labour party had failed to declare £700,000 in donations, as required by the rules, and had asked Apco to investigate the sources and circumstances. The problem was that the PR firm's report had gone much further, investigating the private lives, political affiliations and even religion of the two journalists responsible for the scoop, Gabriel Progrund and Harry Yorke.

The details of the report had been circulated and shared within the party, including baseless accusations that Russia was behind the scoop, allegedly trying to discredit the Labour party in the run-up to the election.

The accusation against Labour Together is therefore that they attempted to interfere in a legitimate journalistic investigation and used 'dirty means' to try to discredit the two journalists by gathering information about their private lives and spreading lies about their motives and sources.