A senior minister has said he is “confident” the prime minister’s top aide will stay in post despite calls for his resignation over a failure to declare hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations.
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, described Morgan McSweeney, Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, as a “highly talented individual”, and suggested recent reports about him was the work of political opponents trying to discredit him.
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Mr McSweeney, who is seen as the mastermind behind Labour’s landslide election victory, is facing questions over the failure to declare more than £700,000 in donations to Labour Together, the thinktank that fuelled Sir Keir’s Labour leadership campaign in 2020.
The PM’s top aide led the think tank from 2017 to 2020. As a members’ association, Labour Together is required to report donations and loans to the Electoral Commission, the body that regulates election spending.
In 2021, the commission fined the think tank £14,250 for more than 20 breaches – prompting Mr McFadden to say: “All these issues had been looked into three or four years ago.”
However, the issue has been thrust into the spotlight after the Daily Mail reported that a lawyer for the Labour Party had advised Mr McSweeney to describe the undeclared £740,000 in donations as an “admin error”.
The Mail also reported records released by the independent Electoral Commission, which oversees elections and regulates political finance, show Mr McSweeney was told in November 2017 donations to Labour Together had to be declared but he still failed to do so.
Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake wrote to the Electoral Commission on Thursday asking for a fresh investigation, the publication of the original report, and a potential referral to the police.
Labour minister Steve Reed told Sky News the Tories “are just raking over old stories to distract from the fact they’ve got many, many problems”.
Housing Secretary Steve Reed said the matter has been closed
Mr McFadden told Wilfred Frost on Sky News Breakfast: “I think Morgan is a highly talented individual.
“I’m not surprised the Tories are targeting someone like that. They’ll see him as a formidable opponent. After all, he’s someone who worked with me to help deliver the biggest Labour election victory for a long, long time. So I’m not surprised that his political opponents will use every weapon they can, to try and attack him.”
Asked whether he believed Mr McSweeney would stay in post, Mr McFadden said: “Yes, I do.
“I can see why the Tories want to make as much of this as they can, and they want you to be asking me and other Labour spokespeople about it. But the Electoral Commission… took action at the time and they issued a statement last night making clear that was the case.”
Tory chairman Mr Hollinrake alleged the prime minister may have failed to declare “potentially thousands of pounds’ worth” of support from the think tank.
He has written to the parliamentary standards commissioner asking for an investigation into Sir Keir.
Mr Hollinrake accused Mr McSweeney of “hiding a secret slush fund he used to install Keir Starmer as Labour leader” as he urged the Electoral Commission to call in the police.
Alex Burghart, the shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, told Sky News he would be “pretty worried if I was Morgan McSweeney”.
Referring to the scandals over the resignations of Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson – a close ally of Mr McSweeney – Mr Burghart said: “It seems that whenever the Labour Party announces they’ve got full confidence in someone, they have to resign a couple of days later.”
He accused the prime minister of not declaring to the parliamentary authorities the support he had received from the think tank for his leadership campaign.
“We have a register of interests… and there is no record of Keir Starmer ever having declared any support from Labour Together, despite the fact that everybody knows that it was set up in order to make him Labour leader,” he said.
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A spokeswoman for the Electoral Commission said the issue had been “thoroughly investigated” in 2021, and it had been “satisfied that the evidence proved beyond reasonable doubt that failures by the association occurred without reasonable excuse”.
She added: “Offences were determined and they were sanctioned accordingly.
“We are conducting a thorough review of the information shared this week by the Conservative Party and whether or not it indicates any new potential offences previously not subject to any regulatory action. We are aiming to conclude this review by Friday.”
Sky News has approached Downing Street for a comment.
