A ‘Subject Access Request’ (SAR) by left-wing MP and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has given a further glimpse at the extent of the spying and plotting of scandal-riddled Israel lobby-funded ‘Labour Together’ against the Labour left.

An SAR is a statutory mechanism, under UK data law, for individuals to demand an organisation reveal what information it holds on them. McDonnell made an SAR to APCO, the firm contracted by Labour Together to spy on journalists who were investigating Labour Together’s plots against the party’s left.

Labour Together

Labour Together was run by Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s disgraced former chief of staff — and then by now-resigned Starmer front-bencher Josh Simons. Both are ardent Israel supporters. But the response to McDonnell’s SAR reveals the extent of the group’s apparent plotting to take over the party even more thoroughly. Or, more accurately, it reveals it by not revealing it.

APCO’s legally-obligated reply to McDonnell’s is little more file after file of black redaction, with nothing else showing than — usually single-line — mentions of McDonnell himself. The rest is redacted as supposedly “personally identifiable information”. Like this one, in which only an anodyne line about McDonnell is revealed:

Yet the document is marked “Confidential”, despite supposedly showing nothing that isn’t available in the public record — and heavily redacted to black out what is presumably other, equally public information. Or this one, also marked confidential despite showing nothing but information about seats and majorities that could easily be found in moments online — McDonnell’s entry is on a subsequent page that doesn’t show the headers:

More redactions

A few hint at potential plans to oust or undermine, or to coordinate communication campaigns, like this “Communication plan”, made while McDonnell was still shadow chancellor under Jeremy Corbyn, in which line after line is, you’ve guessed it, blacked out:

When the information redacted is publicly available and not sensitive, then the question becomes one of the purpose of the document — why was Labour Together paying a company to put together lists that could easily be compiled from Google, or the parliamentary website? And why doesn’t APCO — and presumably Labour Together — want to hide even the names of the people it was listing.

Was it a targeting aid for the Labour Right’s coordinated and underhanded deselection programme to winnow out MPs it wanted replaced by Starmer clones? Was it a list of MPs to be targeted for the hostile briefings Labour Together is now known to have conducted until Corbyn was removed? Something else?

Whatever it was, Labour Together thought it was worth spending money on. And, based on its disgraceful track record, that can’t mean anything good for the country or the working class.

By Skwawkbox

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