Operation Cannon Fallout: Cabinet Office Launches Josh Simons Probe

The Cabinet Office Launches an Investigation Into the Cabinet Office.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

So, the Cabinet Office is investigating a Cabinet Office minister. Pause on that sentence for a moment. Let it settle. The very department charged with upholding standards in public life will now determine whether one of its own ministers breached those standards. Of course, the outcome will be a masterpiece of institutional self-restraint.

Josh Simons, the former director of Labour Together and current parliamentary secretary in the Cabinet Office, stands accused of commissioning the US PR firm APCO to investigate the backgrounds of journalists to run a smear campaign.

Their offence was straightforward: they had reported that Labour Together failed to declare more than £730,000 in donations. The retaliation was a dossier containing what the newspaper says are entirely false claims, linking the journalists to Russian interests and Kremlin-hacked emails.

Is this, a cabinet minister asked with apparent sincerity, how we hold ministers to account? As a matter of fact, yes. This is precisely how this government does it.

Starmer’s Convenient Distance

There is a long and proud tradition in British public life of having a scandal investigated by the institution that produced the scandal. The outcome is reliably the same: a carefully worded statement, a finding of no systemic wrongdoing, and a quiet suggestion that lessons have been learned. The scandal itself is then buried under the procedural rubble of the inquiry.

The ethical firewall here is made of tissue paper. Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s recently departed chief of staff, led Labour Together for years. He sits at the very centre of the political operation that produced this government. His successor at the think tank now sits in the Cabinet Office that is meant to investigate his successor’s conduct. The circles do not overlap. They are the same circle.

Sir Keir Starmer says he was “in the dark” about the activities of his primary political vehicle. This is, one must admit, an impressive claim. Labour Together did not merely support Starmer’s leadership. It was, as Sky News reported this week, “a vehicle for crushing the left” and propelling him to Downing Street. To suggest he was unaware of what that vehicle was doing is rather like a driver claiming ignorance of the engine. But this is the studied art of Starmer politics: proximity to power, distance from accountability. When a policy fails, it was misread by advisers. When an ally misbehaves, the Prime Minister is shocked, simply shocked, and launches an inquiry. The inquiry then exonerates the institution while the original victims, in this case two

journalists whose reputations were subject to a fabricated smear, wait patiently for justice that may or may not arrive.

The Russian Ghost in the Machine

We have covered Labour Together’s wider history in depth, including its role in Operation Cannon, the coordinated effort to delegitimise critical journalism. This latest episode is not an aberration. It is the standard operating procedure. When the facts are inconvenient, you do not argue with the message. You attempt to destroy the messenger. The only difference this time is that they targeted journalists with the platforms and the connections to fight back.

The tactic is as cynical as it is familiar. If you cannot disprove the reporting, suggest the reporter is compromised. If you cannot suggest they are compromised, suggest they are working for a foreign power. The dossier allegedly prepared by APCO, the US firm hired by Labour Together, attempted to frame the journalists as linked to Russian interests or hacked Kremlin emails. Chucking mud in the hope some of it sticks…

The Art of Investigative Journalism

The reality, as is so often the case, was rather different. One of the journalists targeted, Paul Holden, one of the targets of the frame has spent his career investigating Russian oligarchs and was instrumental in recovering nearly $1 billion in stolen assets from South Africa’s corrupt Gupta family. His work has assisted law enforcement agencies around the world. The smear, had it succeeded, would have been a gift to criminals and money launderers seeking to discredit him.

The cowardice is striking. These intelligence files never claimed Holden’s reporting was inaccurate or his documents inauthentic. They merely expressed a burning desire to discover what else he knew. What they reveal is not strength, but fear. They are worried about what he has. They want to find out what else he is going to reveal.

The system is working precisely as it was designed…

The UK’s system for ministerial standards is famously toothless. It relies on codes of conduct rather than statutory law. The PRCA, the PR industry body, may investigate APCO, but it has no power over the politicians who commissioned the smear. The Cabinet Office inquiry, meanwhile, has every incentive to manage the story rather than pursue it.

This is not accountability. This is its theatrical understudy. A government that is permitted to mark its own homework will always award itself top marks for integrity, regardless of how comprehensively it cheated to pass the exam.

The question we should be asking is not whether this investigation will find wrongdoing. The question is why, in a functioning democracy, we continue to allow the suspects to appoint their own jury.

“The investigation is not accountability. It is the insulation of power. And a government that marks its own homework will always give itself full marks, no matter how badly it cheated, of course lessons will be learnt”

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Further reading:

Operation Cannon: Labour’s War on the Fourth Estate: labourheartlands.com/operation-cannon-labours-war-on-the-fourth-estate/

Starmer’s Internet Crackdown: labourheartlands.com/starmers-internet-crackdown/

Morgan McSweeney Resigns: labourheartlands.com/morgan-mcsweeney-resigns/