• • America may feel divided, but laughing at the English always united us as a people. Thanks to the Keystone Kops government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, we should have plenty of entertainment this weekend. Thursday, Racket reported on a snowballing scandal (https://www.racket.news/p/exclusive-brits-spied-on-racket-other) surrounding Parliamentary Secretary and House of Commons MP Josh Simons (https://members.parliament.uk/member/5060/contact). In 2023, when Simons was at the Labour Together think tank, he hired a private PR firm called APCO (https://apcoworldwide.com/) to investigate a group of journalists that included Sunday Times writer Gabriel Pogrund (https://www.thetimes.com/profile/gabriel-pogrund?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqesRgbtt6r1WSrqfdYpQemTFup-n0GjRf25AncmYn67TELMawMK3JN1CwA4_g%3D%3D&gaa_ts=698fa402&gaa_sig=PpGZCA575-KdiBglzeJ9MTCPRJVli49_ZzbXAWHiWOpRzfMgbRoGRllrI_bvUqZ78mAQNUOoMAaybrtW4rTslg%3D%3D), John McEvoy of Declassified UK (https://www.declassifieduk.org/author/john-mcevoy/), Kit Klarenberg (https://thegrayzone.com/author/kit-klarenberg/) of The Grayzone, Shadow World Investigations (https://www.forumarmstrade.org/paul-holden.html) Director Paul Holden, and me. We’d all published (https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-prime-minister-morgan-mcsweeney-investigation-65fnh8zrt?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeglpDVCYBPCwTkS2VEdO2uArnXkcSvYTBtQ7im06Nmq_kSXH2qZAwoNYW1bdU%3D&gaa_ts=6984b826&gaa_sig=Ipz8Tj362ZtQzd8ognJIn__vNtrSK0RYKiMT0SNH_v_PO3ZZdlEHkSgTN27y6igfvGnJF3nNs0w88a-Hkp6-6A%3D%3D) exposés (https://www.racket.news/p/the-uk-files-a-history-of-the-center) using internal correspondence to expose financial shenanigans like future Starmer chief of staff Morgan McSweeney failing to declare £730,000 (https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-prime-minister-morgan-mcsweeney-investigation-65fnh8zrt?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqeglpDVCYBPCwTkS2VEdO2uArnXkcSvYTBtQ7im06Nmq_kSXH2qZAwoNYW1bdU%3D&gaa_ts=6984b826&gaa_sig=Ipz8Tj362ZtQzd8ognJIn__vNtrSK0RYKiMT0SNH_v_PO3ZZdlEHkSgTN27y6igfvGnJF3nNs0w88a-Hkp6-6A%3D%3D) in donations to Labour Together. In return, they had us investigated and turned over the APCO report to National Cyber Security Centre (https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/) (NCSC) — part of GCHQ, the British analog to the NSA. …

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