Half-way up Bunhill Row in the City of London you will find an airy, if slightly soulless glass-fronted building. Inside are the headquarters of the Electoral Commission.
They’re nice offices, apparently. Open plan in the modern style, with ‘break-out areas’, ‘quiet spaces’ and ‘meeting rooms adapted for hybrid working’.
And somewhere in these well-appointed offices sits one desk in particular. Upon which sits a computer. Inside which resides a file.
According to information obtained by the Conservative Party, it’s a large file. And a rather important one. Because contained within it are the details of how the Prime Minister’s most senior adviser established a covert political slush fund, tried to hide it from the public, Parliament and regulatory bodies set up to protect democracy, and used it to catapult Sir Keir Starmer into No 10.
Starmer’s dwindling band of Cabinet allies and trusted officials insist there is nothing to see in this secret document, and everyone should just move on and forget about it. But others have a very different view.
They claim that, if it were published, it would lead to the immediate resignation of that senior aide, the PM’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. Still others believe it could result in the resignation of the Prime Minister himself.
One Labour MP I spoke to at the weekend even went so far as to say the malpractice it details may lead to ‘the death of the Labour Party’.
But, at the moment, no one really knows the truth. And, if the Electoral Commission gets its way, we will never know the truth. Because it is refusing to publish it.
It is even refusing to publish a summary of the report, though it has done so in similar cases.
In 2021, the Electoral Commission fined the Labour Together think-tank run by Morgan McSweeney after identifying more than 20 breaches of election law relating to undeclared donations
And despite the fact significant new evidence has been unearthed over the past week by this newspaper, and others, of a concerted attempt to subvert rules governing the funding of candidates and political parties, the Electoral Commission is refusing even to look into it.
Today, we have printed more evidence. Of how Steve Reed, a serving Cabinet minister, openly boasted about his achievements running the shadowy lobby group Labour Together. And how millionaire Trevor Chinn, whose funding of that group went undeclared by McSweeney in a clear breach of electoral law, bragged about how ‘Labour Together had played a significant role in electing the new leadership of the Labour Party’.
The evidence is contained in a minute circulated by a government adviser to, among others, Andrew Whyte, Labour’s executive director of governance and legal. He joined the party in 2017 from his role as the Electoral Commission’s guidance adviser and senior adviser.
Despite that, Whyte’s former colleagues still refuse to let the British people know the whole sordid story. Their excuse, laughably, is that to do so may ‘deter future whistleblowers’.
I’ve been a journalist for the best part of two decades. Before that, I was a political adviser. I’ve dealt with a number of whistleblowers who had a range of motivations.
Last week the watchdog turned down requests for a fresh inquiry, despite the emergence of a leaked email in which a top Labour lawyer advised Mr McSweeney to portray the episode as an ‘admin error’
But they all had one thing in common. They didn’t just want the whistle to blow, they wanted it to be heard. They desperately wanted whatever malpractice they were exposing to be subject to the disinfectant of public scrutiny. Every day we are presented with the spectacle of another member of the political class wringing their hands over the implosion of public trust in our structures of governance. ‘Why is faith in our cherished nation’s institutions collapsing?’ they wail.
This. This is why.
Precisely who the hell do the people sitting in that office on Bunhill Row think they are? The Electoral Commission as established by public statute, at significant taxpayer expense, to fulfil one primary function: To maintain, in its own words, ‘public confidence in the democratic process and ensure its integrity’.
And yet this morning they are saying to the public: ‘Yes, we do have a major report on how your Prime Minister rose to office on the back of an illegal slush fund. Yes, we do believe serious offences were committed. But we’re not going to let you know what, or who, or how, or why, or when, or where, or by whom.’
In past Parliaments, we have had major reports – even full police investigations – into the eating of cake, the purchase of No10 wallpaper, and claiming for duck houses.
But the British establishment is now trying to tell the people they will be denied transparency over illegal abuses that directly resulted in Keir Starmer being elected their Prime Minister.
What started as a scandal is now morphing into nothing less than a grotesque cover-up. The Electoral Commission must publish the McSweeney Report. Or be damned.
