The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy, by Paul Holden, has already been a deeply impactful book which has claimed the scalp of Downing Street’s director of strategy and, quite plausibly, No10’s director of communications, too.
Now investigative journalist Holden talks to Inside Croydon columnist Andrew Fisher about how the fraudulent Labour Together project worked to get Starmer elected as Labour leader and, ultimately, Prime Minister, and how the two leading figures behind it were Morgan McSweeney and Steve Reed.
Both McSweeney and Reed are familiar figures to readers of Inside Croydon.
Reed has been a Croydon MP since 2012, while McSweeney worked as Reed’s chief aide during his time as leader of Lambeth Council.
McSweeney also worked for The Campaign Company, the Croydon-based public relations firm owned by David Evans, who Keir Starmer installed as Labour’s General Secretary when he became party leader in 2020.
Today, McSweeney is the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff at No10 Downing Street, while Reed is housing and local government minister in Starmer’s cabinet.
In his book, Holden exposes Reed and McSweeney’s involvement in the antisemitism crisis that engulfed the later years of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.
“There was and is antisemitism in the Labour Party,” Holden says, adding that it was not “pervasive throughout the party”.
Holden’s book shows the links to pro-Israel lobbyists that inflamed the issue.
He also talks about the discovery of how, in 2020, Croydon MP Reed “submitted dossiers on 10 individuals to the head of Labour’s Governance and Legal Unit”.
Four of the 10 on Reed’s list accused of antisemitism were Jewish!
The Andrew Fisher Interview, part of our Under The Flyover podcast strand, is premium content for paying subscribers to Inside Croydon- To listen to this latest episode, sign up on our Patreon page as a paying subscriber by clicking here
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Read more: The Fraud: how Reed’s Labour spied on Croydon councillors
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If you look at the election prediction websites, on current polling it is looking more and more likely that Streatham and Croydon North will go from Labour to Green at the next election.
If finding out about Steve Reed’s past behaviour isn’t enough, his current performance in Government is making losing his seat look like safe bet.
Would that it were true, Peter, but on the current polling I have seen, Reed ’em and weep’s grip on power he can abuse is safe. Natasha Irons might have something to worry about though
Applying national polling to how Croydon votes is, since 2020, proven to be a waste of energy, whether that’s wind power, solar or nuclear.
Reed is an absolute disgrace – he was already an utterly useless local MP who does less than nothing for his voters, now a light has been shone on his scheming and incompetence in actual government, he very severely deserves to lose his seat and be out of a job.