Novara Media point me at some work, presented in an article in the Times by Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke who track the role of Labour Together and its shady fund raising, Novara say,
According to the Sunday Times account, between 2017 and 2020 McSweeney failed to declare £730,000 in donations from a slew of millionaire businessmen, misreported and underreported other payments, and falsely assured supportive MPs that electoral law was being followed.
Joe Guignan in Novara Media
The article turns to the question of lying as a political strategy,
A massive fraud was perpetrated in the 2020 Labour leadership election. It is now clear that Starmer was a kind of Manchurian Candidate, a sleeper agent for entirely other interests than was made to appear at the time.
Joe Guignan in Novara Media
They also reference Eagleton’s book, “The Starmer Project”, which I reviewed in May 2022.
The Times article, mentions an Electoral Commission investigation, which declared that Labour Together, while Morgan McSweeny was Company Secretary, was guilty of 20 breaches of election finance law,
In September 2021, the watchdog delivered its verdict. It said Labour Together’s claims did not amount to a “reasonable excuse”. It found the organisation had committed more than 20 breaches of the law involving more than £700,000 of donations, and issued a fine of £14,250. A spokesman said this was “towards the high end of [the] scale” and was the largest penalty issued that year bar one. They said: “This reflected the multiple offences committed by Labour Together over a period of three years.” The watchdog can technically issue a fine of £20,000 per offence, which, in this instance, would have exceeded £500,000, although that rarely happens.
Pogrund & Yorke, Times
I have asked the Commission for the URL of their investigation.
Pogrund and Yorke conclude,
The MPs credited with creating Labour Together — Reeves, shadow chancellor, Streeting, shadow health secretary, Mahmood, shadow justice secretary, Reed, shadow environment secretary, as well as Bridget Phillipson, shadow education secretary, and Lucy Powell, shadow Commons leader, and Lisa Nandy, shadow international development secretary — sit in Starmer’s top team.
Pogrund & Yorke, The Times
Pogrund and York also make the following source attribution,
This investigation is drawn from interviews, analysis of public filings and leaked documents. The Electoral Commission documents were made available by Paul Holden, an investigative journalist whose book, “Keir Starmer, Labour Together, and the Crisis of British Democracy”, is published next year and is the basis of a series of forthcoming articles published by US journalist Matt Taibbi.
Pogrund & Yorke, The Times