The Fraud@StarmertheFraud
PAUL HOLDEN STATEMENT REGARDING SIR LAURIE MAGNUS’ INVESTIGATION INTO JOSH SIMONS AND THE NEED FOR A FULL INQUIRY INTO LABOUR TOGETHER
On the 23rd of February 2026 Sir Laurie Magnus was asked by Sir Keir Starmer with establishing whether Josh Simons MP had broken the Ministerial Code. Sir Laurie is the Independent Ethics Advisor to the Prime Minister. On the 27th of February 2026, Sir Laurie wrote to the Prime Minister that he saw ‘no basis for advising you of any breach of the Ministerial Code by Mr. Simons.’
Simons was referred to Sir Laurie because Simons had appointed a reputation management firm, APCO Worldwide, that investigated me, my family and several journalistic colleagues, including journalists now at the Sunday Times and the Guardian. Simons appointed APCO in November 2023, when he was a director of Labour Together.
I have grave concerns about Sir Laurie’s investigation and the soundness of this finding. I believe that this investigation was conducted and concluded without considering important evidence. I believe this because I wrote to Sir Laurie, while his investigation was ongoing, offering to provide evidence. I then submitted this evidence to Sir Laurie. My evidence was substantial and substantive. My letter setting out this evidence ran to sixteen pages.
My evidence included material that was not in the public domain and was known only to me and handful of other people. It is my opinion that this evidence indicated that Josh Simons MP could have potentially violated the Ministerial Code on Ethics while serving as a Minister. I provide one example of this below.
Sir Laurie has confirmed to me that he did not receive my evidence during his inquiry. He did not receive this evidence because it was not sent to his Secretariat by the Cabinet Office until long after his inquiry had concluded. My correspondence sat with the Cabinet Office for more ten days before it was sent to Sir Laurie’s secretariat. I have not been given a reason for this failure. I provide the text of two letters I received from Sir Laurie in March and April below.
Sir Laurie also confirmed to me that he did not conduct a fact-finding investigation into whether Josh Simons violated the Ministerial Code. Instead, Sir Laurie only considered the materials that had been gathered in a Cabinet Office fact-finding exercise, alongside an interview he conducted with Simons.
At no stage during the fact-finding exercise was I ever approached to give evidence. As I understand it, no journalist or individual targeted by APCO’s investigation for Labour Together was asked by the Cabinet Office to give evidence. Josh Simons, at the time, was a Junior Minister in the Cabinet Office.
I have attempted to resolve this matter at length in an exchange of letters with Sir Laurie. I received my last letter from Sir Laurie two days ago. On this basis, I now believe that this process has run its course and believe there is nothing to be gained from attempting to resolve this amicably behind-the-scenes. I have found Sir Laurie’s responses disappointing and obtuse.
Sir Laurie has indicated that he will not reopen an inquiry into Simons because Simons is no longer a serving Minister. He has also rejected my request to consider withdrawing his findings. He has also rejected my suggestion that he write to Sir Keir Starmer informing him that his conclusions were reached without considering my evidence.
Yesterday afternoon, @johnmcdonnellMP raised a vital point of order in the House of Commons. He cited reporting in the Financial Times alleging it had procured an audio recording indicating that an APCO contractor was instructed to delete materials related to the investigation for Labour Together (I understand APCO denies that any information was deleted or that an instruction was issued). He called for a full and unfettered Parliamentary inquiry into Labour Together and APCO.
In response to this reporting, I have instructed my solicitors to urgently contact APCO and Labour Together to seek assurances that deletions have not taken place, and to remind them of their duties to fully disclose information to me because of Subject Access Requests I submitted to both parties in February this year.
I note that Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House, has agreed with John McDonnell’s call for a full inquiry. I am grateful that he recognises the gravity of the situation.
The House must now move urgently to fully investigate this matter.
This scandal is going nowhere. More evidence will come out. My family, my colleagues and the country deserve to know the truth about the political project that delivered us Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and Peter Mandelson as US Ambassador.
Background and Potential Violation of the Ministerial Code
On the 15th of February 2026, it was reported that Sir Keir had instructed the Cabinet Office to conduct a fact-finding investigation into Simons’ role in appointing APCO to investigate journalists.
This followed a Sunday Times front-page story the same day about how APCO had written a report called Operation Cannon pursuant to its investigation for Labour Together.
I have now seen a copy of the Operation Cannon report as it pertains to me. It is a disgraceful, invasive and profoundly libellous document. It shows that APCO ‘traced’ my home address, which it listed, and identified that I was living with my partner Jessica.
The Operation Cannon report made several totally false, highly defamatory and deeply insulting allegations about me, my colleague Andrew Feinstein, and Gabriel Pogrund. It also made serious and entirely false allegations against Jess’ father Andrew Murray. The Times has reported that this report has been ‘disseminated widely in Westminster and Fleet Street.’
The Guardian has since confirmed that the Josh Simons and Labour Together reported me to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a part of GCHQ, attaching a truncated copy of the Operation Cannon report. Simons had removed reference to Gabriel Pogrund but retained the profoundly defamatory materials about me, my colleagues and my family.
On the 23rd of February 2026, Sir Keir Starmer referred the matter to Sir Laurie Magnus to make a finding as to whether Simons had violated the Ministerial Code.
Sir Laurie’s remit was narrow. He was only tasked with establishing whether Simons violated the Ministerial Code while serving as a Minister. Simons’ appointment of APCO predated his election as an MP and thus fell outside of the scope of Sir Laurie’s investigation. Sir Laurie was also only tasked with reviewing the evidence provided by a Cabinet Office fact-finding exercise. This exercise, as I noted above, did not solicit evidence from me or, to the best of my knowledge, any other victims of the APCO investigation.
Sir Laurie’s investigation focused on whether Simons had violated the Code in the way he responded to the revelation of the full scale of the APCO investigation; whether, most notably, Simons had made dishonest statements in response to the media stories that had been breaking since the 5thof February. Amongst other things, Simons had liked and endorsed a claim on ‘X’ stating that the APCO/Labour Together story was a ‘nothingburger.’
On the same day that the matter was referred to Sir Laurie, Simons posted to a Labour Party Whatsapp group. It appears he did this in error because he swiftly deleted his message. He wrote: “Jonny [Reynolds] rang. PM [Prime Minister] will ask Laurie [Magnus] to look into it. Aim is to move fast. But the PET did find I had not broken the code.’
PET likely referred to the Propriety and Ethics Team of the Cabinet Office, which had conducted the fact-finding exercise. This was the same body that conducted the ‘due diligence’ on the appointment of Peter Mandelson. If Simons’ message was accurate, it meant that Sir Laurie was being asked to consider the evidence of a fact-finding exercise that had already cleared Simons of any wrongdoing.
It was in this context that I wrote to the Cabinet Office on an urgent basis on the 23rd of February 2026. I asked them to forward a letter to Sir Laurie that I had attached. I sent this letter by email and post. In my letter to Sir Laurie, I highlighted Simons’ Whatsapp message. I explained that I was one of multiple targets of APCO’s investigation. I explained I had evidence of relevance to his inquiries. I asked to be given the opportunity to give him this evidence.
I ended my letter by explaining that I hoped that Sir Laurie would ‘consider me, and my fellow journalists, as partners in your efforts to ensure that Ministers are rightly held to the standards set by the Ministerial Code.’
I did not receive a response to this letter.
On the 27th of February, I sent a sixteen-page letter to Sir Laurie. The letter set out extensive evidence that I believed suggested that Simons may have violated the Ministerial Code.
Here is one example.
Following a Guardian report on the 6th of February about APCO’s investigation, the journalist Kevin Maguire had posted to X criticising Simons and sharing a screengrab of the Guardian headline. Maguire wrote ‘he [Simons] shouldn’t be a Minister. Deeply concerning.’
In response, Simons contacted Maguire. He told Maguire that he had not asked for ‘British reporters’ or ‘British journalists’ to be investigated. This was untrue. The contract between APCO and Labour Together, and addressed to Simons, stated that APCO would investigate the sourcing of stories published by the Sunday Times, which had been written by two British journalists, Gabriel Pogrund and Harry Yorke. It also explicitly stated that it would specifically investigate me. I am a British citizen and a member of the National Union of Journalists, and I was, indeed, extensively investigated by APCO in a deplorable manner.
As noted above, my partner’s father, Andrew Murray, a lobby journalist for the Morning Star at the time of APCO’s investigation, was also investigated.
In response, Kevin Maguire posted to X that he had a ‘detailed chat with @joshsimonsMP and accept that he didn’t ask for any British reporters to be investigated plus note the Guardian changed the headline.’ Simons responded to this post by thanking Maguire for ‘picking up’ the phone, noting that ‘if journalists are ever under attack in Britain, as in so many other countries in the world, I’ll be standing right alongside you @kevin_maguire.’
I was swiftly alerted to this exchange on X. I duly contacted Maguire, who told me about his conversation with Simons. I explained to Maguire that I was targeted by Simons and Labour Together, that I was British, a member of the NUJ, and had a long career as an investigative journalist spanning nearly two decades.
Maguire then posted: ‘this controversy is far from over. I was assured firm paid £30,000 wasn’t asked to probe “British journalists” but @starmerthefraud author Paul Holden is a British citizen (although born in South Africa) who has lived in Britain for 15 years and is a @nujofficial member.’
In my opinion, I believe that Magnus might have found that Simons breached the Ministerial Code on honesty if Magnus had known about these exchanges.
On the same day that I sent my detailed evidentiary letter to Sir Laurie, Sir Laurie wrote to Sir Keir Starmer to inform him that he had not made a finding that Simons had breached the Ministerial Code. This letter was published the following day, alongside an announcement that Simons had resigned. Simons issued a statement explaining that he had been cleared by Sir Laurie but that had decided to resign in the interests of the government. Remarkably, Simons dedicated a significant portion of his statement to attacking me, my work and my colleagues.
On the 6th of March, I wrote to Sir Laurie. I explained that ‘I simply do not understand why you did not give me the chance to give you the evidence when I asked. I now have serious doubts that you read it, let alone weighed it in your decision-making.’ I asked him whether he had received my letters and considered their contents, whether he would re-open his investigation, and other matters related to the scope and procedure of his investigation.
Sir Laurie responded to me on the 18th of March. Sir Laurie told me he was ‘sorry to read about the distress that you and your family have been experienced.’ He then explained that ‘at the time I provided my letter setting out my advice to the Prime Minister on the 27th of February, my secretariat had not read either of your letters and I was therefore unaware that you had written to me.’
On the 28th of March, BBC Newscast interviewed Josh Simons. The interview dealt with his appointment of APCO while director of Labour Together. Simons cited Sir Laurie’s findings stating that Magnus had found that he was being ‘honest and truthful.’ As I have already pointed out in my previous statement, I was not contacted by the BBC to comment or respond to Simons’ interview. If I had been contacted, I would have told the BBC about the situation with Sir Laurie, as well as other matters.
In summing up the episode, Laura Kuenssberg stated that ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if in time to come [Simons] turns up back in government, because I think, the official verdict on what went wrong was that he hadn’t actually done anything wrong, but the mess was making it embarrassing for government. So that was the verdict of the standards boss, Sir Laurie Magnus, who looked into this. So that’s important to say that on the record. They sort of said, “yeah, this was embarrassing for the government’s reputation that this saga had happened, but actually Josh Simons had told the truth and he hadn’t sort of meant to do anything wrong.”
This is a strange, infuriating and absurd situation. On two occasions, Simons has been absolved of wrongdoing by two institutions that are tasked with defending British democracy. On both occasions, Simons was given the opportunity to set out his version of events. Yet, at no stage was I allowed to do so, nor were any of the other victims of the APCO investigation.
Of course, it may be that, on review of my evidence, Sir Laurie would still have found in favour of Simons. Perhaps listeners of BBC’s Newscast would be unconvinced by what I had to say. That I would accept, albeit with some salt. All I have asked for, repeatedly, is to be able to set out the evidence I have in my possession and give my version of events. I think it reflects very poorly on all parties that this very low bar has not been met.
Full text of Sir Laurie Magnus Letter to Paul Holden, 18 March 2026
18th March 2026
Dear Mr Holden,
Thank you for your letter of 6th March 2026. I am sorry to read about the distress that you and your family have been experiencing.
You ask a number of questions about your two letters dated 23rd and 27th February sent to me via the Cabinet Office. At the time that I provided my letter setting out my advice to the Prime Minister on 27th February, my secretariat had not read either of your letters and I was therefore unaware that you had written
to me.
You also ask about the scope of my work. As stated in my letter to the Prime Minister of 27th February, he asked officials on 15th February to carry out an exercise to establish the facts in response to allegations made about the conduct of Mr Simons. Once this process was concluded and the facts reported to the Prime Minister, he referred the matter to me for advice. The Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister explained in Parliament on 23rd February that this referral was not the start of a new process, but a continuation of the exercise started on 15th February with the aim of providing advice to the Prime Minister on next steps. As part of that exercise, I reviewed the fact-finding work undertaken by officials, I met Mr Simons to understand his explanation of the matters covered in that exercise, and I considered the public statements made by Mr Simons whilst a Minister in response to allegations about his actions as Director of Labour Together.
Finally you ask whether I would consider re-opening my work. It is not within my remit to open an inquiry into Mr Simons now that he has left the Government, including to review my earlier advice to the Prime Minister.
Yours sincerely,
Sir Laurie Magnus CBE
Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards
Full Text of Letter from Sir Laurie Magnus to Paul Holden, 15 April 2026
Dear Mr Holden,
Thank you for your letter of 1 April.
I am able to provide the following information concerning the receipt of your correspondence.
Your hard copy letter of 23 February was opened by my secretariat on the morning of Monday 2 March. Your emails containing your letters of 23 and 27 February were forwarded to my secretariat on 2 March. Both letters were shared with me on 2 March.
I hope you will appreciate that I am not in position to provide information on the work of the Propriety & Ethics team in the Cabinet Office. Information on making a “subject access request” to the Cabinet Office can be found at the following link:
gov.uk/government/org…
Yours sincerely,
Sir Laurie Magnus CBE
Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards
