Author seeks help in Labour MP selection irregularities probe

Martin Shipton

An author who exposed how Morgan McSweeney and others plotted to get Keir Starmer elected as Labour’s leader by misleading party members and driving left-wingers out is appealing for evidence of irregularities in MP candidate selections, including in Wales.

Investigative journalist Paul Holden’s book The Fraud looked at the McSweeney plot in detail. He believes there was a concerted effort to block MPs considered too left wing from standing again, with unfair tactics used to replace them with candidates seen as more compliant.

Now, in a follow-up project, he wants to gather as much detail about candidate selection irregularities as he can.

One of the cases Holden will be looking at will be the circumstances under which former Cynon Valley Labour MP was defeated by the more right wing Labour MP Gerald Murphy when their seats were merged.

In September 2023, after she lost the selection contest for the new constituency of Merthyr Aberdare, Ms Winter said she had major concerns about the use of software called Anonyvoter by party members who didn’t cast their votes in person at a hustings meeting.

She called for an investigation into the use of Anonyvoter after allegations were made that manipulating the result of the ballot was possible.

In April this year, four Labour activists in Croydon, London were charged with conspiracy and computer misuse in relation to irregularities surrounding the candidate selection process for the Croydon East constituency at the 2024 general election. Anonyvoter was used in the selection process.

Holden said: “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 Parliamentary Labour Party.

“Sir Keir Starmer was the frontman for a scandalous 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 and his allies, allegedly 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 irregularities so widespread that veteran journalist Michael Crick warned of potential ‘corruption’. One MP selection has resulted in criminal charges being filed against Labour officials.

“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.”

Information

Together with fellow journalist Jessica Murray, Holden is now seeking information to take the project forward.

He said: “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 only looking 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.”

He asks for any relevant information to be sent to [email protected].