The political apparatus that enabled Keir Starmer to rise to power is said to have also incubated a covert campaign choking opposition media outlets, quelling free speech by abusing “misinformation” and “fake news” labels. The project ran under the banner Stop Funding Fake News (SFFN), was resourced inside the Labour-aligned think tank Labour Together, and later developed into the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
On both sides of the political spectrum – such as The Canary on the left and Breitbart on the right – media outlets considered hostile to the centrist faction of the Labour Party had their lawful speech censored. Ultimately, a small, well-connected political clique were able to build an entire censorship infrastructure under the banner of “fighting misinformation” and kneecapped critics on all sides. How exactly did they do it?
Labour Together: The Beginning
Between 2018 and 2020, Labour Together received £739,000 in donations that were not declared to the Electoral Commission. They were found guilty of violating electoral law and fined in September 2021. In the meantime, SFFN took shape as a supposedly anonymous “concerned citizens” effort against fake news. Internally, it is alleged to have been incubated and resourced by Labour Together, targeting publishers where they were most vulnerable: programmatic advertising and public-sector ad budgets. Later, SFFN evolved to CCDH, which now hosts the campaign and has presented demonetisation as a replicable model for combating “misinformation”.
Morgan McSweeney: The Man at the Centre
During the above period, Morgan McSweeney – who is now Keir Starmer’s chief of staff – was Labour Together’s company secretary and listed himself as Managing Director on LinkedIn at the same time SFFN was being built. Corporate records show he was sole director of a vehicle later renamed to CCDH until April 2020, and as such signed filings at Companies House. Prominent UK journalist Andrew Marr commented in 2024 that McSweeney’s position was one of “unparalleled power in Labour Party history”.
Labour Together’s “Our Story” page publicly claimed credit for Starmer’s rise to power:
“In Labour’s wilderness years, Labour Together fought to make the party electable again. In 2020, with Morgan McSweeney as Director, it united the party behind Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign. In the years since, Keir Starmer has reformed the party, placed the country’s interests at its heart, and put Labour on the path to power.”
Three months after Starmer’s election victory in July 2024, McSweeney was appointed his chief of staff.
How the Machine Made Starmer Prime Minister
The three-part play that lifted Starmer to power reportedly worked as follows.
- First, Labour Together and allied figures launched an “undeclared war” on the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. A primary vector of this attack was to deliberately, covertly inflame the anti-semitism narrative that plagued Corbyn’s leadership for years.
- Secondly, the group incubated Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership charge, and he later became Corbyn’s successor. McSweeney was Starmer’s campaign chief for the Labour leadership campaign in 2020, and he was rewarded for his efforts with appointments to a series of senior positions in Starmer’s office and the Labour Party thereafter, now occupying the chief of staff role.
- Part three saw the launch of an astroturf campaign – a deceptive political tactic that fakes widespread public support with careful orchestration by a hidden entity – attacking non-conformist media and free speech on both sides of the Atlantic. The goal was to demonetise and delegitimise outlets who were deemed supportive of Corbyn, or anyone who opposed McSweeney and his allies. Later, SFFN morphed into a broader campaign against alt-right outlets in the US.
Stop Funding Fake News: How It Worked
SFFN operated under the guise of a grassroots campaign combating hate and lies, and was launched publicly in March 2019. Its plan was to monitor programmatic ad placements, tagged brands when their ads appeared on targeted “unfriendly” sites, and lobbied companies to pause or totally pull spend. Media buyers could import SFFN’s “blocklist spreadsheet” into their own ad platforms including step-by-step instructions to exclude specific domains. SFFN engaged government buyers too – including the most prominent case of convincing the UK Parliament to pause its relationship with Breitbart. Weeks later, the UK Cabinet Office adopted a whitelist that excluded targets the SFFN identified, resulting in public ad spending no longer reaching a range of outlets. A big win for SFFN.
The Canary, Breitbart, Westmonster: The Major Targets
The Canary is a left-leaning site that scrutinised the Corbyn anti-semitism narrative, and it became a sustained target with the SFFN accusing it of bigotry. Despite the indpendent regulator Impress later stating that The Canary was in fact not anti-semitic, critical damage was already dealt to The Canary’s advertising-led funding strategy, leading to mass shedding of staff and a complete change in its funding model.
Breitbart was targeted in late 2019. SFFN artificially amplified a claim that Parliament’s ads were appearing on its sites, prompting a rapid pause. Then, it pressed for broader government exclusions and urged brands to block Breitbart’s YouTube channel on grounds of monetising fake news, misinformation, and hate speech. Once again, the UK revenue pipeline narrowed severely. Another win for SFFN.
The right-wing UK site Westmonster was targeted too. SFFN accused the site of being a “propaganda channel” championing the Brexit Party and its leader, Nigel Farage. Later renamed to Reform UK, the party is set to form the next UK government according to current polls. SFFN claimed the outlet pedalled “toxic post-truth politics”, fueling “anger and hatred” towards migrants, and SFFN urged readers not to vote for Brexit Party candidates in the UK’s European Parliament elections. According to SFFN, Westmonster also “stoked fear of migrants” because it included stories about Channel Crossings on small make-shift boats to seek refuge in the UK.
But, hypocritically, just a couple of weeks ago Starmer’s government – with McSweeney playing a prominent role – introduced punitive reforms to the UK’s asylum system, citing reducing Channel Crossings as a key objective.
Center for Countering Digital Hate: The US Version
In May 2020, SFFN was described on its own site as a project of CCDH. It was CCDH who presented demonetisation as a scalable, effective tactic against online harms and briefed officials and media about a broader fight against “malignant behaviour”. Leadership links traced back to the Labour Together office, including Imran Ahmed, who publicly took credit for both SFFN and CCDH.
Ahmed claimed that McSweeney had gifted him a “shell company”, originally called Brixton Endeavours, that was then converted into CCDH and later absorbed SFFN. This is a clever attempt at blurring whether or not McSweeney had any operational role in CCDH, but it’s not completely clear. Between 2018 and September 2019, McSweeney was the sole director of the company Brixton Endeavours, and remained a director of CCDH until April 2020. During this time, he did things like sign off on CCDH’s accounts, and listed himself as a CCDH director on LinkedIn for years. It was also registered to the same address as Labour Together.
Imran Ahmed, who is now the CEO of CCDH, also worked side-by-side with McSweeney in Labour Together’s small South London office while they both created SFFN.
It Doesn’t Matter Who You Support
Whether one votes for Brexit or Corbyn, Farage or Starmer, the principle at stake here is alarming to all. Democracies can punish libel, fraud and incitement. But they cannot allow a governing faction and its allies to secretly weaponise brand safety and squeeze lawful speech until it becomes economically unviable.
A democracy cannot survive if the government can run anonymous astroturf operations, skirt electoral law, influence advertisers, and covertly shape the information environment from behind a curtain. If the alleged actions are accurate, they demonstrate a political machine willing to burn down pluralism to control the narrative. That should worry everyone, regardless of specific ideology.
Final Thought
It simply doesn’t matter whether you like Breitbart or The Canary, or which party you vote for. Rather, the question is whether we accept a media environment where a small, well-connected circle can totally control political narrative across the spectrum while hiding behind anonymity rhetoric.
Democratic governments are starting to lean harder on speech controls than some of the states they themselves criticise. As efforts to suppress dissent or unfavourable headlines crosses political and international borders, it feels much less like public protection and more like total narrative control. People should be able to challenge power – from all directions – without fearing criminal penalties.
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Categories: Did You Know?, UK News