A top Labour minister has defended Sir Keir Starmer’s under-fire chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, amid mounting attacks over the failure to declare donations to his Labour Together think tank.
The organisation, where Mr McSweeney was director before coming to work for Sir Keir, was fined by the elections watchdog over its handling of £740,000 donations in 2021.
But the Tories claimed a leaked email from a lawyer to Mr McSweeney had sought to mislead the Electoral Commission.
Work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden on Wednesday said the Conservatives were targeting Mr McSweeney because he is a “very talented man”.
Mr McFadden, who worked closely with Mr McSweeney on Labour’s election strategy in the run-up to the 2024 landslide win, said he had full confidence in the No 10 chief of staff.
He told LBC radio: “I’m not surprised that people opposed to Morgan McSweeney are attacking him because he’s a very talented man.
“I worked closely with him in the general election that we fought last year – and I think when opponents attack you like that, it’s because they know you’re a talented person.”
The Conservatives published a 2021 email from Labour lawyer Gerald Shamash to Mr McSweeney discussing how to handle the Electoral Commission.
In it, Mr Shamash questioned Mr McSweeney about the reasons for not reporting the donations and suggested “it may be better if LT [Labour Together] cannot deal substantively with questions I pose then perhaps best to simply base our case as to the non‐reporting down as admin error”.
The commission found a series of breaches by the group for failing to declare almost £740,000 in donations under Mr McSweeney’s watch and hit it with a £14,250 fine in September 2021.
Mr McSweeney left his Labour Together role in April 2020 to become a senior aide to Sir Keir in opposition and then in government.
Tory chair Kevin Hollinrake said the legal advice to Mr McSweeney “shows how authorities may have been misled over hundreds of thousands of pounds of donations used to install Starmer as Labour leader”.
He said: “We believe there is a strong public interest in revealing the full truth to the public about possible criminal wrongdoing.
“The prime minister was elected on a pledge to restore honesty and integrity in politics, but time and again he has deceived the public and put his party before our national interest.”
He added: “‘Nothing-to-see-here’ Keir may be too weak to fire a chief of staff who tells him what to think, but Conservatives believe the public deserves the truth.”
A Labour Together spokesperson said it “proactively raised concerns about its own reporting of donations to the Electoral Commission in 2020” and the outcome of the investigation was public knowledge.
The commission said it had “thoroughly investigated the late reporting of donations by Labour Together” and concluded the failures occurred “without reasonable excuse”.
