Richard Townsend

Enthusiast for the great outdoors and the wildlife that belongs there.

[Paul Holden @pauleholden]

This a deeply disappointing, borderline irresponsible interview of Morgan McSweeney from @bbcnickrobinson. It looks like impunity in action. Has the media not learnt any lessons from Mandelson and of the need to properly scrutinise political actors?

It is the BBC's job to hold political actors to account, to pose them real questions, and to get them to put a proper version of events on the record.

That is all the more important for a figure like McSweeney, who has wielded extraordinary power and has led or participated in attacks on legitimate, factual journalism, but who has never spoken about his role in these scandals on the record.

The interview doesn't touch, once, on the rock-solid evidence of McSweeney's serious unlawful misconduct or the Labour Together/APCO scandal. This stuff is widely available and easy to verify.

Here is a reminder of what we know about McSweeney, about which he wasn't asked a single thing:

1. McSweeney was Company Secretary of Labour Together from July 2017 to April 2020. During this period he failed to report over £700,000 in donations to the Electoral Commission. This was plainly unlawful. LT was found guilty and fined for this offence, but said in public it was an 'administrative oversight.'

2. McSweeney failed to report donations after he had unsuccessfully attempted to convince the Electoral Commission he didn't need to report them in late 2017.

3. McSweeney failed to report donations after the Electoral Commission told him, explicitly, that Labour Together had a legal duty to report donations.

4. McSweeney engaged in a two-month correspondence with the Electoral Commission in early 2018, in which it was clear he knew he had to report donations. Yet he failed to do so for over two years thereafter.

5. McSweeney failed to report donations even though he was telling MPs he was reporting donations, and even though Labour Together's website also stated that it was declaring donations to the Electoral Commission.

6. McSweeney failed to report donations even after Shabana Mahmood, on Labour Together's behalf, wrote an article for LabourList in February 2020 stating that Labour Together was reporting its donations. At the very time Mahmood wrote the donations, LT was taking in donations it was failing to declare.

7. McSweeney used this undeclared money, to fight an undeclared, covert war on the Labour Party leadership between 2017 and 2020. He also used it to pay for polling which was then fed into Starmer's leadership bid. Materials produced by McSweeney during his time at LT was fed, word-for-word, into Starmer's campaigning material. According to Rachel Wearmouth, McSweeney spent 'every spare moment' during the last six weeks of 2019 to prepare Starmer's leadership bid, during which time McSweeney was drawing a salary from LT.

8. When Labour Together was put under investigation by the Electoral Commission for McSweeney's failure to report donations, McSweeney was consulted by LT's lawyer Gerald Shamash. The email recording this consultation and its contents were published by the Tory Chairman Kevin Hollinrake and have been available in public for a year. The email raises serious questions about whether LT was candid in its responses to the Electoral Commission and, in particular, McSweeney's correspondence with the Commission in 2017/2018 that shows he was aware of the need to report donations. Early correspondence between LT and the Electoral Commission shows that, despite being asked to provide all information of relevance to the Commission's inquiries, LT failed to even mention McSweeney's name, let alone the phone call.

9. In early 2019 McSweeney launched an astroturf campaign called Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN) , with his friend and factional ally Imran Ahmed. It was supported by @SteveReedMP and operated out of the same office as Labour Together. SFFN purposefully set out to 'eviscerate' the economic viability of @TheCanaryUK and to destroy the livelihoods of its journalists, many of whom were long-time members of the National Union of Journalists.

At no stage in its first year operation did SFFN declare its controlling minds. Instead it presented itself as a 'grassroots' campaign of well-meaning activists.

McSweeney and Ahmed tried to take out proper journalism because they saw it as a threat to their political objectives. "Destroy the Canary or the Canary destroys us," is what McSweeney told Labour Together insiders according to Anushka Asthana.

SFFN made promiscuous allegations of antisemitism against The Canary - the antisemitism that McSweeney claims is what drove his factional war on the left - which were found to have no substance when reviewed by a panel of media lawyers and practitioners at media regulator Impress. SFFN repeatedly inferred that The Canary was antisemitic because it run articles quoting left-wing and anti-Zionist Jews disturbed by aspects of the "antisemitism crisis."

10. SFFN also targeted well-known US media sites, which led to McSweeney being directly called out by the US State Department. His colleague, Imran Ahmed, is now sanctioned by the US because the US accuses the company he and McSweeney set up, CCDH, of being part of a global censorship complex.

11. When I started reporting on McSweeney's undeclared money and his secret campaigns, including by taking damning primary documents to the Sunday Times, Labour Together appointed APCO Worldwide to produce a 'package' that would 'proactively undermine' my factually accurate, public interest reporting.

To be clear: APCO were hired to 'proactively undermine' my reporting on McSweeney and his role in Starmer's rise. The intention, as shown in internal docs, was to protect both Starmer and McSweeney's reputations ahead of an imminent general election, while I was trying to warn people about the true nature of this project and it's unlawful origins.

12. APCO produced an insane, ludicrous, highly defamatory report that accused me, my family and my colleagues of being part of a pro-Kremlin network of journalists and speculating that I received hacked documents from Russia. APCO also investigated @Gabriel_Pogrund, with whom I'd collaborated with on the Sunday Times story, making a series of offensive comments about him and his ethnicity. APCO identified a range of other journalists in the UK and US as "persons of interest" to be investigated.

This highly invasive, despicable investigation targeted my work colleagues and my family, including by finding my home address and mapping my personal relationships. Labour Together and its Managing Director, Josh Simons, reported me to the National Cyber Security Centre on the basis of this mad, insane report.

13. Less than a month ago, it was revealed that McSweeney and his buddy Paul Ovenden (later Chief of Strategy at Number 10, who would resign following revelations from my book) were copied into emails about the investigation. McSweeney plainly knew about APCO's investigation. Simons, in one mail, wrote to set up a meeting with McSweeney, Ovenden and APCO's Tom Harper in 'HQ' to discuss the 'Paul Holden report.'

Three days after this meeting I was reported to the NCSC, along with my colleagues and family members. Emails show Simons was coached in how to make a 'crime report' about me to the NCSC.

14. The APCO/Labour Together scandal was so ugly and so damning that Labour Together has been forced to change its name. It also led to the resignation of Josh Simons as a Junior Minister. The Speaker of the House has supported calls for a Parliamentary inquiry into Labour Together.

15. Josh Simons thereafter stepped aside as the MP for Makerfield in order to make way for Andy Burnham, the incoming PM who has displaced McSweeney's man, Starmer. There is a straight and clear line between attempts to protect McSweeney from scrutiny in 2024 and Starmer's resignation in 2026.

So, to make this clear: there was a massive scandal because plans were put in motion to stop questions being asked about McSweeney's unlawful failure to declare money... and now the public broadcaster is failing to ask McSweeney questions about the money. Has the media learnt nothing from the Mandelson scandal about what happens when you don't properly scrutinise political actors?

And here's some things McSweeney and Robinson did talk about, but which doesn't bear scrutiny:

1. Starmer didn't just take some suits and glasses as 'freebies' during the election campaign. He took over £100k in freebies between 2021 and 2024, more than every Labour leader since Tony Blair combined. In addition to free clothes, Starmer took football tickets, tickets to watch the horse racing, and free holiday accommodation for his family from a billionaire. One of his football freebies was donated by a company that had only just been forced to pay a £11m settlement because the installed faulty and potentially flammable cladding on tower blocks in Gosport. Taking these donations means that Starmer had conflicted himself on key areas of policy even before he was elected.

2. Both McSweeney and Robinson quickly collude in claiming that Sir Keir Starmer didn't say that Israel 'has that right' to shut off water, fuel, food and electricity to Gaza. But we've all seen the video, where what Starmer has said is utterly plain. Multiple Ministers went on air to defend the statement thereafter. Does the BBC really think that huge numbers of Muslim councillors immediately left the Party by mistake, because they can't understand plain English?

3. McSweeney has said that Labour Together was 'neutral' during the 2020 leadership election. But Labour Together, and its key associates, have said repeatedly since 2022/2023 that LT backed Starmer's leadership bid. You can find these comments on the Wayback Machine in about two minutes.

4. McSweeney says he never intended to rid the Party of Corbynism. There are now multiple accounts, including from the country's leading political editors and journalists, about how McSweeney crafted and distributed strategy documents, including a plan called 'Operation Red Shield' and a 2017 SWOT analysis, that set out plans to undermine Corbyn's leadership and install a new leader who would 'renew' the Party.

5. This is not the first time that McSweeney has spoken to the media. Instead, it is the first time he has let his comments be attributed to him in public. Multiple journalists have spoken about how he was the source of stories damaging to his opponents. While he was Chief of Staff at Number 10, he was meeting with the editors of the major UK newspapers more regularly than Number 10's own head of comms. We know this because transparency regulations means that these meetings are recorded and can easily found on the gov website. This man has shaped our media discourse, and our political epistemology, in profound and disturbing ways. It is utterly disingenuous to claim that this is the first time he's spoken to the media.

[The Heartlands Tribune @HeartlandsTrib]

There is a lot to be said about Andy Burnham.

And there are plenty of people already leaping to defend him, usually by attacking anyone who dares point out the obvious.

Here’s the thing...

Burnham has not been parachuted in to be handed the highest office in the land to save the people or rescue the country.

He has been brought in because the Labour Party machine has shifted up a gear in an attempt to save itself.

They are hoping the public will look more kindly on a different face, as if Starmer alone caused Labour’s collapse in support.

He didn’t...

Starmer was the face of bad policy, poor government, donor politics, managed slogans and contempt for the people. Changing the face will not change the direction.

And that is the real insult.

Labour has over 400 MPs. A supermajority. A whole parliamentary party supposedly ready to govern. Yet when the machine needed a replacement, it had to ship in a substitute from the old Blairite days.

Not one of them had the ability, authority or confidence to take up the challenge.

That is not renewal.

That's panic...

As for Burnham, for those of us that have no longer tied our self to Labour’s mast,
you don’t have to dig very deep to find the real Andy Burnham.

He is not some insurgent socialist waiting in the wings. He is a dyed-in-the-wool Blairite, a career politician forged in the New Labour machine.

Before Parliament, he worked as a researcher and special adviser. In government, he served under Blair and Brown. As an MP, he backed the Iraq War in 2003.

As Health Secretary, he inherited and defended a system already riddled with New Labour’s love affair with marketisation, targets, outsourcing and PFI-style thinking. That is the political soil he grew out of.

So let’s stop pretending Burnham represents a clean break from Starmerism.

He's not the antidote. He's the earlier variant.

A smoother voice, a better regional accent, a bit more warmth on camera, but still the same basic politics: manage decline, praise “partnership” with the private sector, keep the donor class calm, and call it change.

If Labour replaces Starmer with Burnham and expects the country to mistake it for renewal, they are insulting people’s intelligence.

New boss. Old machine...

#AndyBurnham

[ITV Football @itvfootball]

"They are letting down this country on a massive scale"

@IanWright0 looks at Scotland's football vision and future moving forward... 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

🎙️ @markpougatch

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

Was chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Accused critics of Israel of antisemitism. Supported the Iraq war. Avoided tax. Welcomed PFI. Designed a punitive, pro-private sector welfare-to-work programme.

@mehdirhasan on James Purnell back in in 2010
https://t.co/Up6alAn0W6

[Andy Wightman @andywightman]

I am concerned at the increasing number of instances where BBC presenters on the radio (Radio 4 and Radio Scotland) make serious factual mistakes that are entirely unnecessary if proper briefing and editorial control were in place. This clip from 0913:38 on Mornings today presented by Laura McGhie reports as fact that Peter Murrell was a senior member of the Scottish Government. Completely untrue!

[Met4Cast - UK Weather @Met4CastUK]

Wet bulb temperatures on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday could exceed >25°C widely.

This is the critical threshold for vulnerable populations (elderly, infants, or individuals with chronic illnesses). It is also the point where anyone performing moderate to heavy physical labor or outdoor sports faces an exceptionally high risk of heat exhaustion and heatstroke.

[Bill McGuire @ProfBillMcGuire]

As the UK approaches 40C again, here is a list of the five hottest ever days

All in the last 23 years

Four of the five in the last 7 years

Can anyone spot a trend?

[Mike H @mikoh123]

Nigel Forage has an absolute car crash on #bbcbreakfast in an interview which he says nobody cares about his £5 million pound gift, tries to deflect by comparing what Sally Nugent spends her wag s on, how she earns and accuses the BBC of putting him in danger.

[Iain Cameron @theiaincameron]

This one is for the proper geography nerds. I placed my two walking poles 15 metres apart on a Scottish mountain (Ben Lui) yesterday to illustrate one of the best geography quirks that Scotland has.

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

Keir Starmer was not merely a disappointment. He is a mendacious figure of ethical decrepitude, a man who won the Labour Party leadership based on promises that he jettisoned five seconds after winning - a Labour leader who dared banish from the Labour Party not only his predecessor but also remarkable human beings like director Ken Loach - the gentleman who has taken the historic Labour Party and transformed it into a vessel for the very oligarchy it was elected to restrain.

Consider the litany of Starmer’s moral and logical failures. He promised a 'different Britain', yet his actions were a masterclass in Tory-lite politics—using the same maxed-out credit card analogies that once served the austerity brigades to justify his own failure of vision. He promised a human rights lawyer’s approach but he embraced a racist-lite version of Farage.

On Europe, Starmer promised Brexiteers that Brexit is Brexit yet stood before those who yearn to rejoin the European Union, winked at them to make them feel that Britain would gradually reconnect, even rejoin, with the EU while offering nothing of substance. This is not leadership; it is a fraud.

And then there's the manner in which Starmer and his government rushed to offer Israel unequivocal support in pursuing its genocide in Gaza, sacrificing precious political and civil liberties in the UK by imprisoning grandmothers, priests and peaceful activists who dared support Palestine Action, an organisation that Starmer and his minions proscribed as terrorists for practising the usual activist tactics of trespassing to spray paint military planes that had demonstrably aided in the genocide. To add insult to injury, Starmer performed the diplomatic pantomime of recognising a Palestinian state, in a manner that ensured it would never happen.

But above all else, this is a government that has learned nothing from the post-2008 era. Starmer and his Chancellor are playing the same tired austerity game while enabling and empowering the Finance Curse perpetrated by the City of London, throwing in forgood measure cuts in international aid to fund a military spending trickle under the guise of a "Strategic Defence Review" . It is the same old doctrine: austerity for the masses, socialism for the financiers and the arms dealers.

History will remember Mr Starmer as a man without conviction, a Prime Minister who offers not a shred of honesty, but merely the cruel illusion of change. He is ethically decrepit because he had chosen, consciously, to abandon principle for power. And for that, history will indict him. Good riddance, I say.

https://t.co/sGfebPkDXR

[Michael Crick @MichaelLCrick]

Two years to the day.

[The Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM) @cfmmuk]

1/7 Two attacks. Two communities. One country. @cfmmuk data reveals a two-tier media. A #Muslim community attacked in #Edinburgh got less than a seventh of the airtime across British news channels that was given to the Golders Green attacks in London. 🧵

[Double Down News @DoubleDownNews]

BREAKING: Keir Starmer Resigns

Media sold Starmer as 'forensic, decent & capable' PM. He was NEVER that as we made clear yrs ago:

"Starmer is a LIAR in charge of a brutal, authoritarian, inhuman political machine but you wouldn't know about that if you read or watched UK media"

[Owen Jones @owenjonesjourno]

Keir Starmer lied through his teeth to become Labour leader.

He justified Israeli war crimes, arrested opponents of genocide, attacked pensioners, disabled people and migrants, pocketed freebies, crushed dissent and threw others under the bus to save himself.

History damns him

[Saul Staniforth @SaulStaniforth]

Jacqui Smith, who was given a peerage by Keir Starmer, was doing the media round this morning & extolling his achievements.

Anyway, here's a clip from the archive.

[John McDonnell @johnmcdonnellMP]

Let’s all get real. Keir Starmer’s support even in his own cabinet has collapsed & he’d be humiliated in a leadership election.Streeting has even less support & is in a puerile self promotion exercise. The priority now is the construction of an effective radical policy programme

[ScotRail @ScotRail]

🎉 More than 9 in 10 customers are satisfied with their ScotRail journey! With a 92% satisfaction rating, ScotRail is one of Great Britain’s top-performing train operators in the latest independent Rail Customer Experience Survey. 🚆

📲 More info here: https://t.co/tVzXrcMy7M

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚜 🌾 🐄 🐖 🐓 Lincolnshire farmer Nick Allpress the Brexit tragedy.

Many farmers were misled to believe Brexit would mean control, prosperity and a better deal for British agriculture. Instead they have watched:

🚜 Farm support slashed & IHT burden
🌱 Seed and inputs delayed by border bureaucracy
🥕 EU exports & imports hit by new barriers
👨‍🌾 European workers replaced with labour from much further afield
📉 Imports undercutting domestic production

Nick’s point is devastating: “That boat’s sailed.”

The idea that British workers would replace European seasonal labour simply did not happen.

Brexit didn’t end dependence on migrant labour, it just changed where the labour came from and made the system more complex and expensive.

Meanwhile British food security is washed away by lower standard imported food, impacting public health and weakening national security.

[Acyn @Acyn]

De Niro: I hate to say it, but loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser.

I can’t love a country that starts stupid and inhumane wars, killing thousands of innocents and indirectly causing the deaths and suffering of millions more.

I can’t love a country that takes healthcare away from millions of people and uses that money to enrich their pals in the Trump-Epstein class.

I can’t love a country that sends out masked militias to shoot citizens in the streets, torture our neighbors, and separate families.

I can’t love a country that’s led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant.

And let me just say it: I can’t love a country that’s led by Donald Trump and his sycophant Congress.