If you think reporting on this site doesn’t matter, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who may not have the title for long — begs to differ. Beginning in 2023, after publication of a series of “UK Files” exposés on this site, the Starmer-aligned group Labour Together contracted a private firm called APCO to investigate me, author Paul Holden, Sunday Times writers Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke, Guardian writer Henry Dyer, Kit Klarenberg of The Grayzone, and John McEvoy of Declassified UK.
British reporters were shown a statement Wednesday in which a cabinet official claimed to be “distressed” and “furious” that Poglund was targeted, and claimed “no other journalists” were investigated or featured. (Apparently Holden and the rest of us don’t count.) The Labour Together work was commissioned by future MP and current Parliamentary Secretary Josh Simons, who told the Sunday Times last weekend: “Those who know me know I think the work of journalists is vital to our democracy.” Simons added it was “nonsense” that APCO was charged with investigating journalists, and that Labour Together was merely interested in investigating a “suspected illegal hack.”
This story was first broken by Khadija Sharife and Peter Geoghegan at the Substack site Democracy for Sale a week ago, but there have been developments. Not only did Labour Together hire APCO to investigate Holden, me, and others after we published internal emails and financial information, but Labour Together told journalists the APCO reports were passed to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is part of GCHQ, the British analog to the NSA. This trick has apparently come into increasing use in recent years, with Britain’s passage of the draconian National Security Act, in addition to more aggressive use of old laws like the Official Secrets Act, which shares “Basically, Everyone is Guilty” qualities with America’s Espionage Act.
How the “leverage” scam works: