‘Labour Together’ is the group which manoeuvred Keir Starmer into power. And as we’ve reported, the group has been spying on journalists. This recently crossed a line for the mainstream media, because Labour Together didn’t just spy on independent journalists like us here at the Canary; they also spied on the establishment insiders at Rupert Murdoch’s Times.
One thing that came out in all this was that Labour Together may have coordinated with the Guardian’s political editor Pippa Crerar to intimidate a journalist. Now, the Guardian has finally acknowledged what’s going on, and yet they’ve not spoken the whole truth, according to journalist Richard Sanders:
OK – now we are really getting down to the nitty gritty on the Labour Together scandal. @guardian lays out events in detail here and it is hard to see how Josh Simons survives.
But The Guardian – in the final paragraphs – is still being only half honest about its own role. Paul…
— Richard Sanders (@PulaRJS) February 20, 2026
They’re all in it (Labour) Together
Paul Holden is the key journalist Labour Together went after. Holden wrote The Fraud, which is the book that details how Morgan McSweeney and Labour Together worked to prevent their own party from winning in 2019 (and also how they positioned Keir Starmer to take over).
As part of the backlash to his reporting, Holden experienced the following:
Labour Together hired private investigators to spy on journalist exposing Morgan McSweeney. Report was passed to Labour Minister Josh Simons.
Pippa Crerar at The Guardian was going to run story based on lies linking same journalist to Russia.
Sums up New Labour & The Guardian: pic.twitter.com/blxsORJzu1
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) February 15, 2026
In his own words:
About four years ago, I got access to a phenomenal leak of documents out of the Labour Party. That sparked my investigation into Morgan McSweeney and the Labour Party, an incredible story of the reckless and arguably lawless project that has delivered us this Keir Starmer government.
In November 2023, the Sunday Times ran a front page story based on the documents that I gave to it. It raised serious concerns about whether the donations that Morgan McSweeney had failed to report had not been reported on purpose. At the bottom of that article, it simply said that Paul Holden, that’s me, had given certain documents to the Sunday Times and formed part of their investigation.
On the 8th of February, 2024, Pippa Crerar, the deputy political editor of The Guardian, sent me an email. Pippa Crerar’s email said that The Guardian was 24 hours away from running a story that would allege that I was under investigation by the UK security services for receiving information stolen by Russia from a hack of the Electoral Commission.
The story was nonsense.
I hadn’t received a single document from Russia. I would never receive a document from Russia. This is an unbelievable story.
When I told Pippa Crerar that the allegations were false, that in fact I would sue the Guardian for defamation if they reprinted that story, the story disappeared.
Following the recent Times story, Crerar went silent online for several days:
Where is Pippa Crerar? No posts for six days since the Simons story broke apart from this one yesterday which she soon deleted?
Pippa, why so shy? pic.twitter.com/PUgzGaYvIa
— Gerrard Winstanley (@g_winstanley) February 20, 2026
Half truths
Richard Sanders is another journalists who has covered Labour Together. His post at the top reads:
OK – now we are really getting down to the nitty gritty on the Labour Together scandal. [The Guardian] lays out events in detail here and it is hard to see how Josh Simons survives.
But The Guardian – in the final paragraphs – is still being only half honest about its own role. Paul Holden wasn’t just “approached for comment” by the paper about the Simons smears. Political Editor [Pippa Crerar] told him they were going to publish a story the next day that the National Cyber Security Centre (part of GCHQ) was investigating the origin of documents he had supplied to the Sunday Times.
Holden was obliged to threaten legal action. [The Guardian] was prepared to be part of the smear.
[Peter Oborne] and myself wrote about this in [The National] last September, our story based on research by the South African journalist Khadija Sharife.
…
I note The Guardian still determinedly avoids referencing Holden’s superb book “The Fraud” that contains chapter and verse on the dubious activities of Labour Together.
Finally noticing
As we reported, the recent Times ‘expose’ failed to mention that Sanders and Oborne had covered the same story several months earlier. This is a pattern, of course, because the establishment outlets don’t exist to publish news; they exist to gate keep which information gets out and when.
If you want to read the scoops of the future today, be sure to follow the Canary and all the independent journalists and outlets listed in this story.
Featured image via Assvenson (Wikimedia)
By Willem Moore
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