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The Labour minister Josh Simons has resigned from the government after the Guardian revealed that he falsely linked reporters to a “pro-Kremlin” network in emails to GCHQ despite having claimed to be “surprised” and “furious” about a PR firm’s investigation into their journalism.
Simons, who had been a Cabinet Office minister, previously ran the thinktank Labour Together. He quit on Saturday, saying his position in office had become “a distraction from this government’s important work.”
The Makerfield MP had faced mounting pressure over his role in Labour Together’s commissioning of the lobbying and public affairs agency APCO to investigate journalists reporting on the thinktank’s failure to disclose political donations.
Simons faced a formal investigation by the prime minister’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, Sir Laurie Magnus. Magnus concluded that Simons had not breached the ministerial code, but that there was a “distraction and potential reputational damage” in Simons remaining in the government.
Earlier this month, the Guardian revealed Simons, 32, had personally commissioned and reviewed APCO’s report on journalists looking into the group’s funding.
In his resignation letter to Keir Starmer, Simons said he had commissioned APCO in November 2023 to investigate whether the thinktank’s confidential material had been disclosed through a hack of the Electoral Commission.
This followed a Sunday Times story that raised fresh questions about £730,000 of undeclared donations to Labour Together.
The contract Simons agreed with APCO for £36,000 was to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins of a Sunday Times article about Labour Together”.
They would also investigate a series of publications by the freelance journalist Paul Holden, who had supplied the newspaper with material for its story, and stories published by the American reporter Matt Taibbi, “to establish who and what are behind the coordinated attacks on Labour Together”.
APCO would 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”.
Simons told Magnus that the “terms of reference” agreed with APCO were “wider than he had understood and that he acted too hastily in confirming their appointment without the benefit of legal advice”.
Simons had recognised there was a “perception that his purpose extended more widely than investigating the source of a suspected illegal hack, when that was not in fact his intention,” Magnus said.
After the Sunday Times reported that APCO’s report made baseless allegations about its journalist Gabriel Pogrund’s faith, upbringing and personal and professional relationships, Simons had said he was “surprised and shocked to read the report extended beyond the contract by including unnecessary information” on Pogrund.
Magnus said Simons “acknowledges that this perceived gap between his public statements and what he now accepts appears to be a more extensive scope has been damaging”.
Accepting Simons’s resignation, Starmer said: “It is essential that journalists are able to carry out their work without fear or favour, including holding politicians of all parties to account on behalf of the public we serve.”
In a statement on Saturday evening, Labour Together chair Sally Morgan – appointed in September 2024 – sought to present the organisation as having turned a page since the APCO report was commissioned.
Describing the scope of the report as “indefensible”, Lady Morgan added that there had since been a governance review and said: “Much has already changed, including establishing an audit and risk committee, a whistleblower policy and fostering a more open and accountable culture. But we must do more.”
She added that the recently appointed CEO Alison Phillips had “already begun a radical reshaping of Labour Together”. Phillips said: “We are improving our governance arrangements and will learn the necessary lessons of the past.”
Last Friday the Guardian revealed that Simons and his chief of staff had emailed the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) after the APCO report, naming Pogrund and his Sunday Times colleague Harry Yorke and suggesting their story could be linked to a Russian disinformation campaign.
They told the NCSC they suspected the Sunday Times article might be linked to a wider “coordinated effort to discredit” Labour Together in order to undermine Starmer and his then chief adviser, Morgan McSweeney.
They also sent a truncated version of the APCO report to NCSC officials and claimed that Holden could be linked to “people known to be operating in a pro-Kremlin propaganda network with links to Russian intelligence”.
In his resignation letter, Simons said he had never sought to “smear [the] newspaper reporters” targeted by APCO.
He said: “The work of reporters like Gabriel Pogrund, Harry Yorke and Henry Dyer sustains our democracy. With rigour and objectivity, they hold those in positions of power to account.”
Simons had previously disputed the Guardian’s report about his emails with the security officials. In his letter, he said he had filed a case with the NCSC so they could “establish the facts”. He said officials had “met with Labour Together and thanked us for filing the case”.
The NCSC never opened an investigation into the issues raised by Simons, but a law firm representing Labour Together told another newspaper in mid-February 2023 that it could not comment on questions about the donations “due to ongoing investigations by the UK Intelligence services”.
Simons did not address in his resignation letter why he had claimed never to have received information about any journalist other than Pogrund.
The APCO report is understood to have contained information about at least three other journalists: Holden, Taibbi, and Andrew Murray, a journalist at the Morning Star.
There is no credible evidence any of the journalists were involved in a pro-Russian campaign. Holden recently showed the Guardian his source materials, which indicate the story was based on files leaked from the Labour party by whistleblowers.
