The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Labour Together, and the Crisis of British Democracy

Based on Labour Party files, including some never before publicly seen, this explosive investigation lays bare the intrigues, stratagems, and deceits that helped deliver Sir Keir Starmer to Downing Street. Paul Holden shows how Keir Starmer has been the frontman for a ruthless, right-wing political project headed by Morgan McSweeney, now chief of staff in Number 10 and arguably the most powerful man in Britain. McSweeney’s clique often employed dirty tricks to undermine the left-wing Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, fuelling a moral panic over antisemitism and establishing front groups that hobbled prominent independent media outlets in the name of fighting ‘misinformation’. McSweeney then guided Starmer to the Labour leadership on a platform that Starmer, once in office, almost instantly betrayed. Having conquered the party on false pretences, McSweeney and his allies set about purging opponents, marginalising the membership, and dragging party policy to the right. These machinations were made possible by financial donations that McSweeney did not disclose—a violation of the law that arguably subverted Britain’s democratic system. But was McSweeney’s unlawful failure to report donations a mistake—or was it deliberate?This is a sordid tale that includes hacked emails, anonymous smears, dodgy dossiers, cynical stitch-ups, and staggering hypocrisy. It traces the Labour Party’s transformation into a censorial, authoritarian machine, and sounds the alarm about the possible corruption of British politics by dark money.

Using a cache of hitherto unseen documents and exclusive insider accounts, this sensational new book tells the story of how a shadowy group, Labour Together, came to the cusp of delivering Sir Keir Starmer to power in Britain. It reveals, for the first time, the way the project sabotaged Corbynism through covert plotting, propelled Starmer to Labour’s leadership and now, having crushed the left in the party, poses an imminent threat to British democracy as a whole.

The Fraud reveals the chilling nature of Labour Together. Established in 2015, the project was created by ‘eight brave MPs’ who engaged in secret planning to wrest control of Labour. They included people who are now among the most senior members of Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet: Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood and Steve Reed. Morgan McSweeney, the guiding light behind Labour Together, is today one of the most powerful people in the Party, a key figure in selecting future parliamentary candidates.

Holden describes how Labour Together pursued its objectives with a substantial pot of undeclared funding, which it used to secretly insert itself into the Labour Party’s ‘antisemitism crisis’ at a time when it was publicly maintaining a position of neutrality in the Party’s vicious factional-infighting.

In these pages we see how Labour Together selected Keir Starmer to be its frontman, helping him win Labour’s leadership with the most mendacious campaign in recent political history. The Party under Starmer has since embraced the ugliest forms of racism and Islamophobia, and shared information hacked from journalists critical of its allies. The Labour Together project has subsequently transformed the Party into an authoritarian machine entirely intolerant of dissent, rowing back on an ocean of previous commitments and propagating an agenda of reheated austerity.

• | Author: Paul Holden
• | Publisher: OR Books
• | Publication Date: Nov 13, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781682195987
• | ISBN-10: 1682195988