Labour Together, Power Forever: The Think Tank That Engineered an Oligarchy
The Network That Bought British Democracy: How Mandelson’s Epstein Connections Lead Straight to Starmer’s Inner Circle
When Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff hosts his mentor Peter Mandelson at the family home in Scotland, is he entertaining a disgraced peer under criminal investigation for leaking state secrets to a convicted paedophile? Or is he simply maintaining the patron-client relationships that built his career?
The answer reveals how British politics actually works…
Morgan McSweeney pushed harder than anyone for Mandelson’s appointment as US Ambassador. He did this knowing Mandelson had continued his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution. He did this despite security service warnings. He did this even as colleagues raised concerns. And when the scandal broke, McSweeney advised Starmer to defend Mandelson rather than sack him.
This is not incompetence. This is how elite networks protect their own.
The latest Epstein files, released by the US Department of Justice, have exposed the depth of Mandelson’s relationship with the convicted sex offender. Emails show Mandelson passed market-sensitive government information to Epstein during the 2008 financial crisis. Bank statements suggest $75,000 in payments to Mandelson and his partner between 2003 and 2004. Photographs show Mandelson in his underwear on what appears to be Epstein’s property.
Mandelson was sacked as ambassador in September 2025. He resigned from the Labour Party in February 2026. He quit the House of Lords days later. The Metropolitan Police have now opened a criminal investigation into misconduct in public office. Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has submitted information to investigators and condemned Mandelson’s actions as “inexcusable and unpatriotic.”
But Starmer’s judgment is not the only story here. The story is the network.
The Mentor and His ProtΓ©gΓ©
Mandelson gave McSweeney his first job in Labour politics. In 2001, McSweeney operated Mandelson’s famous Excalibur computer, the data system that stored information for Labour’s rebuttal unit. Mandelson later said of McSweeney: “I don’t know who and how and when he was invented, but whoever it was, they will find their place in heaven.”
They remained close. McSweeney hosted Mandelson at his family home. When Starmer needed an ambassador to Washington, McSweeney was “very insistent” that it should be Mandelson, according to sources quoted by Politico. The Telegraph reported that McSweeney “viewed Lord Mandelson as a mentor.”
This explains why McSweeney advised Starmer to defend Mandelson even as the scandal intensified. One source told Politico: “Everyone was like, this is looking really bad for the Prime Minister and Morgan was like, no, we need to defend him.”
Loyalty flows upward in patron-client relationships. McSweeney learned politics from Mandelson. He learned how to raise money, how to select candidates, how to purge opponents. The skills that brought him to Downing Street were taught by a man who is now facing criminal investigation for leaking government secrets to a paedophile financier.
The Selection Machine
McSweeney’s power became absolute when Starmer put him in control of Labour’s candidate selection process for the 2024 general election. This centralised longlisting meant McSweeney’s team could block left-wing candidates and promote loyal centrists. The Times noted that “nobody without elected office wields as much power in British politics as McSweeney.”
Among those selected: his wife, Imogen Walker, now Labour MP for Hamilton and Clyde Valley.
Walker’s campaign received Β£10,000 from Labour Together, the think tank McSweeney founded and directed. She received an additional Β£15,000 from Gary Lubner, a South African-born business tycoon whose family profited from apartheid and who is a major donor to pro-Israel lobby groups. Lubner has given more than Β£4.5 million to Labour since 2023.
And in June 2024, just weeks before the election, Peter Mandelson personally attended a fundraiser for Walker and fellow Scottish MP Gregor Poynton.
This is not coincidence. This is structure.
The Trilateral Connection
There is a reason these people move in the same circles. They literally do.
Keir Starmer joined the Trilateral Commission between 2017 and 2018 while serving as Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Brexit Secretary. He never disclosed this membership to Corbyn’s team. He never declared it to Parliament. Research by Declassified UK reveals he was “one of only two serving British MPs to have been a member.”
Peter Mandelson is also a member of the Trilateral Commission.
Jeffrey Epstein was a member of the Trilateral Commission.
The Commission was founded in 1973 by billionaire banker David Rockefeller to bring together political leaders, corporate executives, and banking elites from North America, Europe, and Japan. Its 1975 publication, “The Crisis of Democracy,” explicitly argued that effective governance required limiting democratic participation. Samuel Huntington, one of the authors, diagnosed the problem as “an excess of democracy.”
This is not conspiracy theory. This is their stated position.
Starmer attended Trilateral Commission meetings alongside two former CIA directors (John Deutch and David Petraeus), the CIA deputy director for intelligence (Jami Miscik), and the former director of US national intelligence (John Negroponte). The meetings are strictly off the record.
When asked about his membership, Starmer did not respond. The Commission’s own rules state that members entering government roles should relinquish membership. Starmer is now Prime Minister. He has not confirmed whether he remains a member.
The Censorship Infrastructure
Morgan McSweeney’s influence extends beyond candidate selection. In 2018, he founded the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British-American nonprofit that campaigns to deplatform individuals and organisations it labels as spreaders of “hate and disinformation.”
The CCDH’s early targets were revealing. It focused not on far-right extremists but on left-wing pro-Corbyn media outlets, particularly The Canary. It also targeted Corbyn himself through amplifying antisemitism accusations. This was McSweeney’s strategy for taking control of Labour: use claims about hate speech to delegitimise the left, then install centrist candidates loyal to him.
Paul Holden’s book “The Fraud” reveals that CCDH was “incubated using resources from Labour Together.” In other words, McSweeney used his anti-Corbyn think tank to launch a censorship organisation that helped bring down Corbyn by restricting the media outlets that supported him.
Leaked CCDH documents from 2024 show “Kill Musk’s Twitter” listed as a top priority. The organisation has pushed for regulatory changes that would give governments emergency powers to order social media platforms to remove content deemed dangerous. After the 2024 summer riots, CCDH met with senior officials from the Home Office, Ofcom, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and the Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism unit.
McSweeney stepped down from CCDH’s board in April 2020, two days after Starmer became Labour leader, to become Starmer’s Chief of Staff. But the organisation remains close to the government. Its recommendations for expanded state censorship powers are being taken seriously.
This is infrastructure. McSweeney built the tools that Labour now uses to control online speech.
The Labour Together Network
Labour Together sits at the centre of this web. McSweeney founded it in 2017, during Corbyn’s leadership, with the explicit goal of replacing Corbyn with someone more amenable to corporate interests. The organisation’s board included Trevor Chinn, a businessman who funded anti-Corbyn MPs, and Martin Taylor, a hedge fund manager.
Between December 2017 and September 2021, McSweeney failed to report Β£740,000 in Labour Together donations within the legal timeframe. The Electoral Commission fined the organisation Β£14,250 for over 20 breaches of electoral law. The Commission stated this was “towards the high end of the scale.”
Labour Together conducted extensive polling of Labour membership to determine how to peel away soft-left voters from Corbyn’s support base. This data was never shared with Corbyn’s team. Armed with these insights, McSweeney selected Keir Starmer as the candidate who could win.
Starmer never declared Labour Together’s support in the official Commons register, despite the substantial resources the organisation devoted to his leadership campaign. Under the Commons code of conduct, MPs must declare support worth more than Β£1,500 designed to help their candidacy. Labour Together spent far more than that.
Now Tory chairman Kevin Hollinrake has written to the Electoral Commission alleging “the funds were used by Labour Together in a sustained political campaign to bring down Jeremy Corbyn and secure the election of Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party.”
This raises the question: Was Starmer’s leadership campaign lawful?
The Pattern
When you map these relationships, a pattern emerges:
Morgan McSweeney learns politics from Peter Mandelson, a Trilateral Commission member with documented ties to Jeffrey Epstein. McSweeney founds Labour Together, funded by hedge fund managers and corporate donors, with the goal of removing Corbyn. He uses Labour Together resources to launch CCDH, a censorship organisation that targets pro-Corbyn media. He conducts secret polling to identify how to win Labour’s leadership for a Trilateral Commission member, Keir Starmer. He centralises candidate selection and ensures his wife and other loyalists become MPs. His wife receives donations from Labour Together and from Gary Lubner, a major donor connected to apartheid profiteering and pro-Israel lobbying. Peter Mandelson, his mentor, personally fundraises for her.
When Starmer becomes Prime Minister, he appoints Mandelson as US Ambassador on McSweeney’s advice, despite known Epstein connections and security service warnings. When the scandal breaks, McSweeney advises defending Mandelson rather than sacking him. When Mandelson is finally dismissed, McSweeney remains Chief of Staff.
This is not a series of unfortunate coincidences. This is how elite consensus operates.
The Iron Law Made Flesh
In 1911, the German-Italian sociologist Robert Michels formulated what he called the “iron law of oligarchy.” His thesis was simple and devastating: all complex organisations, regardless of how democratic they begin, inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies. Power must be delegated to individuals to make any large organisation function. Those individuals then use their positions to maintain control. “Who says organisation,” Michels wrote, “says oligarchy.”
The Labour Party under Starmer and McSweeney is Michels’ theory made flesh.
β George Orwell, 1984
The mechanics: Labour Together was founded in 2017, ostensibly as a “think tank” to study how Labour could win elections. In practice, it conducted secret polling to identify how to remove a democratically elected leader and replace him with someone amenable to corporate donors. It failed to declare Β£740,000 in donations while McSweeney controlled its finances. It received funding from hedge fund managers and businessmen who had actively funded anti-Corbyn MPs.
When Starmer won the leadership, McSweeney was rewarded with control of candidate selection. This is the critical mechanism of oligarchic control: whoever controls entry into the organisation controls the organisation itself. McSweeney could block left-wing candidates and promote loyalists. His wife became an MP. Labour Together directors became MPs. The candidates received donations from the same corporate donors who funded Labour Together.
The Trilateral Commission represents the international dimension of this process. Founded explicitly to insulate economic decision-making from democratic accountability, it brings together political leaders, banking executives, and corporate chiefs. Its 1975 publication diagnosed “an excess of democracy” as the fundamental problem facing Western societies. The solution was not to win democratic arguments but to transfer power to unelected institutions and elite networks.
Jeffrey Epstein sat on the same Trilateral Commission as the current British Prime Minister. This is not scandal. This is structure.
Michels argued that historical evolution mocks all prophylactic measures adopted to prevent oligarchy. Labour’s democratic structures – conference sovereignty, mandatory reselection, one-member-one-vote leadership elections – were designed to prevent exactly this kind of capture. They failed because the oligarchy simply purchased control of the entry mechanism. McSweeney’s centralised candidate selection meant members could vote, but only for candidates pre-approved by the network.
The iron law operates through patronage. Mandelson gave McSweeney his first job. McSweeney built the infrastructure that brought Starmer to power. Starmer made McSweeney his Chief of Staff and let him control candidate selection. McSweeney’s wife received donations from the same corporate donors funding the network. When Mandelson faced scandal, McSweeney advised defending him.
This is not corruption in the usual sense. Corruption implies deviation from proper procedure. This is proper procedure for an oligarchy. The network protects its own because loyalty is the currency of oligarchic power. Mandelson protected McSweeney. McSweeney protected Mandelson. Starmer protects McSweeney. Gary Lubner protects them all with money.
The genius of Michels’ insight is recognising this as inevitable rather than accidental. Complex organizations require delegation. Delegation creates leaders. Leaders use their positions to select their successors. The result is self-perpetuating elite control regardless of democratic forms.
The tragedy is that this capture happened to an organisation founded explicitly to represent working-class interests against elite power. The Labour Party was supposed to be the prophylactic measure itself. It has instead become the vehicle for oligarchy.
The Institutional Capture
The Trilateral Commission was designed to insulate economic decision-making from democratic accountability. Its founding document acknowledged this explicitly: democratic participation produces demands for higher wages, stronger protections, and accountability for power. The solution was not to win those arguments but to remove them from democratic contest entirely.
Jeffrey Epstein sat on the same Trilateral Commission as the current British Prime Minister. Peter Mandelson, Starmer’s choice for US Ambassador, shared market-sensitive government information with Epstein while serving as Business Secretary. Morgan McSweeney, the architect of Starmer’s rise, learned politics from Mandelson and maintains personal loyalty to him even as criminal investigations proceed.
The same McSweeney who built the censorship infrastructure now being deployed to silence dissent. The same McSweeney who centralised candidate selection to lock out the left. The same McSweeney who founded the think tank that may have illegally funded Starmer’s leadership campaign.
Labour MPs are now reportedly discussing mutiny. One unnamed MP told Sky News: “Consistent failures by Morgan McSweeney have damaged our media operation and left the public unaware of much of what we’ve achieved in government. The Mandelson saga has only made things worse, and if Keir doesn’t make changes soon, the PLP will. We’ve had enough.”
But removing McSweeney would not solve the problem. The problem is the network itself.
The Question
Can democracy survive rule by those who consider it excessive?
The answer depends on whether people recognise what is happening. So-called elite networks operate most effectively when invisible. The Epstein files have made them visible.
We now know that Starmer, Mandelson, and Epstein were all members of the same organisation designed to limit democratic participation. We know that McSweeney, who controls access to Parliament through candidate selection and built the censorship infrastructure being expanded by government, learned his methods from Mandelson. We know that Gary Lubner, whose wealth derives from apartheid profiteering and who funds pro-Israel lobbying, can buy influence through donations to candidates selected by McSweeney.
And we know that when this network’s members are exposed for maintaining relationships with convicted sex offenders, for leaking state secrets, for receiving mysterious payments, they are defended by the very people who owe them their careers.
This is oligarchy disguised as democracy.
The Trilateral Commission diagnosed the problem correctly in 1975: there was too much democracy. They have spent fifty years implementing the solution.
The question is not whether Mandelson will face justice. The question is whether the rest of his network will.
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