Reports indicate Labour Together paid thousands for a dossier to discredit reporters investigating their financial declarations. Codename: Operation Cannon.
From false claims of Russian ties to personal attacks, this case raises massive questions for Westminster.
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The Sunday Times found that Labour Together paid a US PR firm, APCO, about £36,000 to compile a dossier on two of its journalists
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after they found that the group had failed to properly declare £730,000 of donations
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The document examined the backgrounds and motivations of journalists Harry York and Gabriel Pogron
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and it included really distasteful assertions about Pogron's Jewish heritage and his supposed ideological motivations
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Now this smear campaign, which was codenamed Operation Cannon, was aimed at discrediting the journalists by falsely suggesting they were part of a Russian conspiracy and had relied on emails hacked from the Kremlin
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It's just absurd, particularly when you consider that Gabriel Programme is actually sanctioned by Russia at the moment
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All of us who believe in a free press should be appalled by this. Journalists should be able to accurately report matters of national interest without being harassed, intimidated and introduced as spies
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Frontbenchers Lisa Nandy and Steve Reid were legal directors of Labour Together at the time
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and Cabinet Office Minister Josh Simons directly commissioned this report. So they all have very serious questions to answer
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But so too does the man who most benefited from Labour Together's dirty tricks, Keir Starmer
