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A Labour minister who claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” at a PR agency’s work to investigate journalists on his behalf had been personally involved in naming them to British intelligence officials and falsely linking them to pro-Russian propaganda, the Guardian can reveal.
Josh Simons, who was running the thinktank Labour Together at the time, was also involved in telling security officials that another journalist was “living with” the daughter of a former adviser to Jeremy Corbyn. Officials were told by Simons’ team that the former adviser was “suspected of links to Russian intelligence”.
The extraordinary disclosures are contained in emails that Simons and his chief of staff at Labour Together sent to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a division of the spy agency GCHQ, in 2024. A spokesperson for Simons, a Cabinet Office minister, said: “These claims are untrue.”
The emails, seen by the Guardian, lay out in detail what Simons and his team wrote to intelligence officials in an effort to get them to investigate the sourcing behind a story in the Sunday Times about Labour Together’s failure to disclose political donations.
When informed by the Guardian about what had been communicated about them to intelligence officials, some of those named in the emails accused Simons of orchestrating a “McCarthyite smear” campaign that left them feeling “violated”.
Simons commissioned an American lobbying and public affairs agency, APCO Worldwide, in late 2023 to investigate the “sourcing, funding and origin” behind the story.
He has in recent days claimed he was disturbed to find the APCO report had delved into unnecessary information about one of the Sunday Times journalists. But the emails show how, weeks after receiving the report, he was involved in naming the same journalist in an email to intelligence officials.
Simons and his chief of staff at the thinktank, Ben Szreter, told the NCSC they suspected the Sunday Times article may be linked to a wider “coordinated effort to discredit” Labour Together in order to undermine Keir Starmer and his then chief adviser, Morgan McSweeney.
Simons has been facing calls to resign over his decision to commission the APCO report into the story, which revealed fresh details about the £730,000 of undeclared donations to Labour Together.
The Electoral Commission had fined the thinktank more than £14,000 for failing to declare the donations. At the time of the undeclared donations, Labour Together was run by McSweeney. He used it in an effort to defeat Corbyn’s leftwing faction of the party and propel Starmer to power.
Simons is under investigation by the Cabinet Office’s propriety and ethics team, which is looking into his role in commissioning and disseminating the APCO report. His spokesperson declined to say whether Simons had disclosed his emails with intelligence officials, which cover a two-week period in January and February 2024, to the Cabinet Office team investigating him.
Facing growing pressure in recent days, Simons has said in statements to the press that he was “surprised”, “shocked”, “distressed” and “furious” to discover the report he commissioned had “extended beyond the contract by including unnecessary information about Gabriel Pogrund”, a journalist at the Sunday Times. He added that the information relating to Pogrund had been “immediately removed” by Labour Together before the report was passed on to intelligence officials.
However, the emails seen by the Guardian show that when Simons and Szreter passed the report to intelligence officials, they named Pogrund and his Sunday Times colleague Harry Yorke and suggested their story could be linked to a Russian disinformation campaign.
They also passed on highly personal information about Paul Holden, a freelance reporter who was credited in the Sunday Times report. In one email, Simons told officials that material published by the Sunday Times may be linked to “people known to be operating in a pro-Kremlin propaganda network with links to Russian intelligence”.
There is no credible evidence any of the journalists were involved in a pro-Russian campaign, or that their story, published in November 2023, was anything other than a public interest report on the prominent thinktank’s breach of electoral law.
‘Likeliest culprit is the Russian state’
The emails show Simons approached the spy agency in January 2024 in an apparent attempt to persuade it to investigate the sourcing behind the Sunday Times story.
Earlier that month, Simons had received the 58-page dossier he had commissioned from APCO. The contract stipulated that APCO would, for £36,000, provide “a body of evidence that could be packaged up for use in the media in order to create narratives that would proactively undermine any future attacks on Labour Together”.
As the investigative news site Democracy for Sale revealed earlier this month, APCO’s report suggested – without evidence – that the Sunday Times story was based on data hacked from the Electoral Commission, which it linked to Russia.
On 23 January 2024, Simons contacted the NCSC with information. A source close to Simons told the Guardian the approach was “to report concerns” that information in Holden’s book may have been obtained following an illegal hack.
When officials requested further information, the emails show, Simons replied: “I will review your questions with my team immediately and come back to you as soon as possible.”
Two days later, his chief of staff, Szreter, emailed the intelligence officials a response to their questions, attaching a truncated version of the APCO report and copying Simons into the thread.
Szreter’s email to the NCSC was written under the direction of Simons, according to a source close to the Labour minister. The chief of staff was “basically a PA”, the source said, and his emails to the NCSC paraphrased and quoted excerpts of the APCO report. A second source confirmed Szreter’s email was “drawn directly” from the report.
The email sketched a theory about the origins of the Sunday Times’s story on Labour Together, which he wrote was a “thinktank close to senior Labour party figures including Sir Keir Starmer and his adviser, Morgan McSweeney”.
The email noted the Sunday Times story had been “written by Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke” and pointed out it had credited Holden as having provided documents, which were also going to form the basis of a book by Holden and articles to be published by an American journalist.
“We suspect that the articles may be a coordinated effort to discredit Labour Together in order to undermine Mr McSweeney and, by extension, Mr Starmer in the run-up to next year’s general election,” wrote Szreter, who is now a Labour special adviser.
“We do not believe that any of the sensitive and closely guarded Labour Together information was leaked by an insider. We believe we have been the victim of a hack by ‘hostile actors’. As the information was disseminated to pro-Russian journalists linked to other ‘hack and leak’ operations, we believe that the likeliest culprit is the Russian state, or proxies of the Russian state.”
By then, GCHQ had identified China – rather than Russia – as being behind the hack of the Electoral Commission. In their emails, Simons and Szreter made other spurious connections to Russia, based on Holden’s private life.
“We understand that Paul Holden, the pro-Corbyn investigative journalist who obtained the documents, is currently living with Jessica Murray,” Szreter wrote. “Jessica Murray is daughter of Andrew Murray, a political adviser to Corbyn during his leadership of the Labour party. Andrew Murray is a highly controversial figure who is suspected of links to Russian intelligence by MI5.”
In the author’s note of his recently published book, Holden discloses “in the interests of transparency” that he has a family relationship with Andrew Murray, who is his partner’s father.
However, at the time of Labour Together’s emails to the NCSC, Holden’s relationship with Murray’s daughter was not publicly known. Contacted by the Guardian, Holden said that due to his role working on sensitive investigations, he had taken steps to protect the identity of his home address.
“It is hugely disturbing [that] this investigation even found out where I lived and with whom,” Holden said. He accused Simons of seeking to smear him in an “absurd and chilling” episode that “could have had real material consequences for ongoing sensitive work”.
A source familiar with APCO’s investigation said that Trace IQ, a fraud investigation tool, had been used to identify Holden’s home address and the names of other residents living there. APCO has been approached for comment.
In his emails with the intelligence officials, Simons also alleged that Holden, who is a member of the National Union of Journalists, was “part of a far-left network … which disseminates pro-Russian propaganda”.
Holden told the Guardian the claims were absurd, saying he and his colleagues had “faced legal and extra-legal threats” as a result of their investigations into Russian oligarchs. He added: “[I think] it shows just how scared Labour Together were about my investigations into what really mattered: the deeply suspect circumstances around the failure to declare £730k in donations in violation of the law.”
Holden’s partner, Jessica Murray, said she was a “private person” and felt “deeply violated and vulnerable” after learning of the efforts to find where she, Holden and their young family lived. “To then connect it to false allegations about Russian criminality, which are then relayed to the security services, is disturbing, creepy and deplorable,” she said.
Andrew Murray said: “The allegation that I have or have ever had any links with Russian intelligence is a lie.”
He added: “This appears to be a McCarthyite smear by Josh Simons, who is clearly unfit to hold any form of government or public office, to attempt to divert attention from the failures of Labour Together to comply with electoral law and to prompt a spurious security service investigation based on nothing more than innuendo and falsehoods.”
Allegations briefed to papers
After a brief assessment, the NCSC decided not to investigate the allegations made by Labour Together about the origins of the Sunday Times story. In the emails, Simons appeared frustrated when intelligence officials did not address his concerns.
In an email on 31 January 2024, he told security officials: “Our evidence suggests that sensitive personal and political information obtained in this hack that was only held by the Electoral Commission and our lawyers has been disseminated to people known to be operating in a pro-Kremlin propaganda network with links to Russian intelligence.
“This has serious implications for British democracy and national security. The information obtained, we believe, could be used to destabilise and disrupt the UK electoral process.” He implored the officials to take action, adding that Labour Together’s information revealed the risk of “an attack on the UK political realm ahead of a general election”.
Simons added: “If NCSC do not wish to engage further, could you advise on the appropriate public body who can help to ensure Labour Together has not been caught up in a hack by a hostile actor on the regulator of UK election.”
The Guardian understands that the NCSC had a meeting with Simons, but ultimately advised him they would not investigate his report. They also pointed out that information leaked to journalists could have been obtained in various ways.
Simons appears to have been undeterred. In the following days, Labour Together and its representatives are understood to have briefed national newspapers – including the Guardian – with allegations about Holden, hacked material and Russia.
At the time, Holden was approached for comment. None of the allegations Labour Together was circulating about him were published by any news organisation. Holden recently showed the Guardian his source materials, which indicate the story was based on files leaked from the Labour party by whistleblowers.
