John McDonnell Demands Independent Inquiry Into Labour Together Smear Operation

The Duty of Candour and the Shadow of Labour Together

When the Hillsborough Law was finally introduced to Parliament, the Prime Minister spoke with a quiver of moral certainty about a new era of transparency. He promised that the British state would never again be permitted to hide from the people it serves. Why, then, does that same spirit of openness seem to evaporate at the threshold of the Labour Party’s own internal machinery?

A growing cadre of Labour MPs, led by the veteran backbencher John McDonnell, is now demanding an independent investigation into the activities of Labour Together. This is not a request for a quiet internal “fact-finding mission” led by the Cabinet Office. It is a call for a rigorous inquiry, governed by the very Hillsborough Law duty of candour that the Prime Minister so frequently champions.

The allegations are, by any objective measure, chilling. Under the leadership of Josh Simons, now a Cabinet Office minister, the think tank reportedly paid £36,000 to a private firm, APCO Worldwide, to investigate the “backgrounds and motivations” of journalists. These reporters had the audacity to investigate the nearly £740,000 in undeclared donations that fuelled the current leadership’s rise. The resulting 58-page dossier, “Operation Cannon,” allegedly contained baseless claims linking journalists to Russian state conspiracies, material that was then reportedly passed to GCHQ.

The Mechanism of Evasion

The response from the party hierarchy has been a masterclass in the institutional obfuscation the Hillsborough Law was designed to dismantle. When challenged, the General Secretary, David Evans, reportedly dismissed the matter on the grounds that Labour Together is not a “Labour organisation.”

This is a legalistic fiction that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. Labour Together was the engine room for the Starmer project. It was previously run by Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s former Chief of Staff. Its board has included current Cabinet ministers. To suggest the party bears no responsibility for its conduct is as credible as a police force claiming no knowledge of a plain-clothes operation because the officers were wearing their own jackets.

• The Allegation: Systematic surveillance and attempted discredit of the free press to protect internal party funding secrets.
• The Institutional Response: A Cabinet Office inquiry into its own minister (Simons), which lacks the independence or the statutory “duty of candour” to compel the truth.
• The Necessary Reform: An inquiry that incorporates criminal sanctions for misleading the public, exactly what the Hillsborough Law promises for other public bodies.

The Mirror of Power

Opponents of an independent inquiry argue that Labour Together is a private entity and thus exempt from the standards expected of public authorities. This fails for two reasons. First, the individuals involved are now public officials, holding the levers of state power. Second, the Hillsborough Law itself seeks to extend the duty of candour to “service providers” and those with “public responsibilities.”

If the government is serious about ending the “culture of lies and cover-ups” that plagued the victims of Hillsborough, Grenfell, and the Post Office scandal, it cannot exempt its own political architecture. You cannot claim to be the party of the “duty of candour” while operating a “duty of silence” regarding your own ascent to power.

We are told the “adults are in the room” now. Yet, hiring private intelligence firms to smear journalists as Kremlin stooges is not the behaviour of adults; it is the behaviour of an elite that views transparency as an obstacle and dissent as a security threat.

The Cabinet Office investigating itself is a charade that only deepens public cynicism. If the Prime Minister truly believes that “injustice has no place to hide,” he should have no fear of an inquiry that is public, independent, and legally bound to the truth.

Transparency is not a gift the powerful grant to the public when it is convenient; it is the price of their authority.

The duty of candour is either a universal principle or a political prop; Starmer must now choose which.

Paul Knaggs

Editor & founder of Labour Heartlands. 𝙁𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙗𝙤𝙧𝙣 𝙀𝙣𝙜𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙍𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙘𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩. Citizen journalist and veteran writing from the working-class coalface challenging the corruption, liberal elitism, and political complacency that dominate Britain today. Dyslexic but driven… I write because silence serves the powerful. Defender of free speech, civil liberties, and real democracy. Committed to an open, accountable democracy, not the manufactured version handed down from party machines, think tanks, or the Westminster bubble.