Shadow World Investigations and Paul Holden – author of The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy – are today announcing a new investigative project about the transformation of the Parliamentary Labour Party under the Labour Together Project. This long-germinating project is soliciting evidence about how Labour Party processes were used (and abused) to manipulate the selection of Labour MP candidates who now make up the majority of the  PLP.

Sir Keir Starmer was the frontman for a rotten political project that spent the best part of a decade remaking the Labour Party along rigidly factional and exclusionary lines.

The most consequential transformation was of the Parliamentary Labour Party.

 Two thirds of the Labour MPs currently sitting in the House of Commons were selected through a process tightly controlled by Morgan McSweeney, reportedly with direct (albeit informal) input from Peter Mandelson. Labour Together, and its key donors, then spent over £2 million on getting this intake of MPs elected. The selection process that McSweeney oversaw was beset by allegations of misconduct and irregulates so widespread that veteran journalist Michael Crick described it as “corruption”. One MP selection resulted in criminal charges being filed against Labour officials, with close connections to key Labour Together figures.

These are the MPs that not just determine the future of the country but will play a key role in either making or breaking the political fortunes of whoever next succeeds Starmer.

In a follow up to The Fraud, my colleague Jessica Murray and I, will be embarking upon ‘The Labour Together Parliament’ project to examine the legitimacy of the process that resulted in the current Parliament, upon which any Labour government will rest.

What we need as a first step is information.

We would like evidence of any wrongdoing or stitch-ups during the selection process. We would like to build a collection of evidence about the ways in which bureaucrats forced through or manipulated the selection process, including in the finalisation of longlists and shortlists, and, where it happened, the decision being removed from local democratic decision making altogether.

We are particularly interested in the vote tallies from every Labour candidate selection between 2022 and 2024. These have not been routinely published. We are particularly interested in tallies that distinguish between postal, online and in-person votes. These different vote tallies would have been provided to losing candidates. Sometimes they were only read out in selection meetings. We are not looking only for results that seem ‘dodgy’ – but all vote tallies, including those that are not in the least suspicious. This will allow us to build a holistic database and rigorously test different hypotheses.

We would also like tallies from candidate selections in seats that weren’t Labour targets and didn’t result in any MP. Ideally, it would be great if we could be provided with contemporaneous evidence of these vote tallies – such as a screenshot of a message or email relaying the result. We would also be interested in narrowing down which CLPs used Anonyvoter for MP selection, even if the vote tallies are not available.

We have set up an email account research@shadowworldinvestigations.org for any information to be submitted to. It would be much appreciated if this call for information could be shared widely.

Paul Holden is an investigative journalist and author with 15 years’ experience of investigating corruption. The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy, by Paul Holden is published by OR Books.

For the Labour Left Podcast interview with Paul Holden, see here.

For Labour Hub’s interview with Paul Holden, see here.

For Labour Hub’s review of Paul Holden’s The Fraud, see here.

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