No 10 Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney will not face further investigation from the election spending watchdog over Conservative accusations of a cover up over reporting donations.
The Electoral Commission said it had thoroughly reviewed the accusations but “found no evidence” of further potential offences. “We are therefore not reopening the investigation,” it said.
It came after fresh Conservative calls for a police investigation into McSweeney’s past role running Labour Together, a think-tank central to Sir Keir Starmer’s rise to the Labour leadership.
It is credited with seeing off the socialist wing of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and installing Starmer as Labour leader and consequently prime minister.
On Monday, Tory Chairman Kevin Hollinrake wrote to the Electoral Commission asking it to look into the handling of donations to Labour Together while McSweeney was its director when Labour was in opposition. He cited a leaked 2021 email from Labour lawyer Gerald Shamash to McSweeney discussing how to handle the watchdog.
In it Shamash questioned 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 organisation was fined £14,250 over its handling of almost £740,000 in donations in 2021. Over the weekend, several newspapers reported on alleged leaked emails suggesting McSweeney had sought to mislead the commission.
An Electoral Commission spokesperson said it investigated the late reporting of donations at the time and “determined multiple offences” including “the failure to appoint a responsible person”.
“The fine was significant and reflects the seriousness of the offences determined, for which no reasonable excuse was put forward,” the spokesperson said.
“Earlier this week the Conservative Party wrote to us with concerns that other offences had been committed. We have thoroughly reviewed this information and found no evidence of any other potential offences. We are confident that the initial determination and sanction were appropriate.
“We are therefore not reopening the investigation.”
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Labour has accused the Tories of mudslinging. On Wednesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, who worked closely with 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.
“I’m not surprised that people opposed to Morgan McSweeney are attacking him because he’s a very talented man,” McFadden told LBC radio.
McSweeney left his Labour Together role in April 2020 to become a senior aide to Starmer. Hollinrake said the legal advice to McSweeney “shows how authorities may have been misled over hundreds of thousands of pounds of donations used to install Starmer as Labour leader”.
Nonetheless, the Tories have made attacking McSweeney key to their pre-conference season tactics. The chief of staff has been facing growing criticism from Labour MPs in recent weeks over the party’s poor poll ratings. He also faced criticism over his advice to Starmer to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite knowing about his links to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after his conviction.
Downing Street has refused to answer questions about McSweeney’s time at Labour Together, but Starmer’s official spokesperson said on Monday the prime minister continues to have “full confidence” in his chief of staff.
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