Newly released documents show Morgan McSweeney ran Labour Together while it polled Labour members and helped sustain antisemitism stories against Jeremy Corbyn. The papers were disclosed to Corbyn in response to a subject access request.
The documents include emails from McSweeney and Josh Simons, and they show Labour Together paying YouGov to repeatedly poll members from 2017 to 2020. One October 2018 email shows McSweeney sharing questions about Corbyn's leadership, the next Labour leader, the media members consumed and the social media platforms they used.
Labour Together and YouGov
Labour Together used the polling to monitor how members viewed the incidence of antisemitism in the Labour party. The survey included a question about antisemitism, giving McSweeney and his allies a running readout on how members reacted to the story they were also helping place in the media.
The documents say The Canary was highly trusted among Labour members and was treated as a political challenge because it defended Corbyn amid antisemitism accusations. Labour Together backed the Stop Funding Fake News campaign against it, and the advertiser boycott helped diminish The Canary's revenue.
Josh Simons and Makerfield
Josh Simons appears in the emails as one of Labour Together's two key figures. He later became a cabinet minister, resigned after revelations that he had hired a reputation management firm to proactively undermine journalistic investigations into Labour Together, Morgan McSweeney and Sir Keir Starmer, and then vacated his Makerfield constituency seat for Andy Burnham.
That chain matters because it shows how the same network combined internal polling, media placement and outside reputation work while Labour Together was still operating. The documents also say Labour Together unlawfully failed to declare most of its donations, which amounted to over £700,000, and that Martin Taylor and Trevor Chinn were key funders.
Jeremy Corbyn in 2018
The papers say McSweeney inflamed the antisemitism crisis that would dog Corbyn's leadership from at least 2018. They also show him directing what questions YouGov put to members, while Labour Together tried to build a detailed guide to the membership's views as McSweeney sought to detach it from Corbyn's leadership.
For Labour members, the practical effect was a sustained effort to measure, shape and test opinion rather than a single burst of campaigning. The disclosure leaves the donation question hanging: what specific legal findings or penalties followed Labour Together's failure to declare most of its funding over £700,000?
