After years of secrecy, political spin and disturbing revelations about investigations into journalists, Labour suddenly wants to lecture the country about press freedom. The hypocrisy is breathtaking.
LABOUR has discovered the importance of a free press. How convenient.
Ministers are now promising to examine new measures to stop wealthy and powerful individuals using the courts to prevent damaging allegations from reaching the public.
But before the Government starts lecturing Britain about transparency and accountability, perhaps it should take a rather uncomfortable look at its own political backyard.
The announcement follows the failed attempt by comedian and author David Walliams to prevent The Guardian and ITV News from publishing allegations of sexual misconduct.
Walliams, 55, has denied wrongdoing. The High Court refused the injunction, allowing the allegations to be reported, although the court did not determine whether they were true.
Now Labour’s victims minister Alex Davies-Jones has declared that the Government is determined to ensure powerful individuals are held accountable, promising further scrutiny of injunctions and legal tactics used to suppress reporting.
Fine words from a party whose own political orbit has recently been embroiled in a deeply troubling controversy involving the investigation of journalists.
Because when it comes to transparency, Labour’s record deserves considerably more scrutiny than its latest parliamentary declarations might suggest.
When journalists investigated Labour, Labour Together investigated the journalists
Perhaps the most extraordinary example emerged in February 2026, when The Guardian revealed that Labour Together, the influential thinktank closely associated with Sir Keir Starmer’s political rise, had hired public affairs firm APCO Worldwide to investigate journalists who had been examining its financial affairs.
These were not journalists accused of committing crimes. They were reporters investigating matters of legitimate public interest, including questions surrounding undeclared political donations.
Labour Together had previously been fined £14,250 by the Electoral Commission over failures to declare hundreds of thousands of pounds in donations.
Instead of simply facing the scrutiny that comes with political influence, the organisation commissioned a £36,000 investigation that included efforts to identify journalists’ confidential sources.
Think about that for a moment.
Journalists investigate the financial affairs of an influential political organisation, and that organisation commissions an investigation into the journalists.
And this is the political world now lecturing Britain about the dangers of powerful people attempting to silence scrutiny?
The revelations became more disturbing when further Guardian reporting disclosed that Josh Simons, who had led Labour Together and subsequently became a Labour minister, had been involved in communications with Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre that linked journalists to alleged pro-Russian activity.
The newspaper reported that there was no credible evidence supporting the insinuations against the journalists.
Simons denied attempting to smear journalists and maintained that his concern had been a suspected leak or hack involving Labour Together’s confidential information.
But the scandal became so serious that it ultimately cost him his Government job.
On 28 February 2026, Simons resigned as a minister following the controversy, acknowledging that his continued presence in Government had become a distraction.
Although the Prime Minister’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, found no breach of the Ministerial Code, the revelations had already raised profound questions about the treatment of journalists investigating an organisation closely connected to Labour’s rise to power.
Even Labour Together’s own chair, Baroness Sally Morgan, described the scope of the APCO investigation as indefensible.
Indefensible. Not the verdict of a Conservative politician or a hostile newspaper, but the assessment of Labour Together’s own chair.
These were not court injunctions, and there is no established evidence that Starmer personally directed the investigation. But they raise fundamental questions about the attitude towards investigative journalism within Labour’s political orbit.
If powerful organisations respond to unwelcome reporting by investigating journalists and attempting to identify confidential sources, how does that square with Labour’s professed commitment to protecting press freedom?
And where was Labour’s great enthusiasm for protecting investigative journalism when this scandal was unfolding?
Whatever happened to Nick Brown?
Then there is the extraordinary case of Nick Brown, Labour’s former chief whip and one of the party’s longest-serving parliamentarians.
Brown was suspended from Labour in 2022 following an internal complaint, yet the substance of the allegation was never publicly disclosed by the party.
After more than a year of disciplinary proceedings, Brown announced his resignation from Labour in December 2023, condemning the process as fundamentally flawed.
He categorically denied the allegation and argued that the proceedings had failed to provide basic procedural fairness.
Labour maintained that it had an independent complaints process designed to ensure allegations were handled impartially.
Confidentiality in disciplinary investigations can be essential to protect complainants and those accused. But where senior political figures are concerned, there is also a legitimate public interest in understanding how parties exercise disciplinary powers and whether their procedures command confidence.
The Brown affair demonstrated just how little the public could be told about a serious dispute involving one of the Labour Party’s most senior former figures.
And it raises an obvious question. If Labour believes that powerful individuals must face public scrutiny, how far does that principle extend into its own party?
Or does transparency suddenly become rather more complicated when the questions are directed at its own senior figures?
Freedom of the press, but only when it suits Labour?
And there is another question for ministers: why has comprehensive legislation against so-called strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs, taken so long?
The Conservatives introduced the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which established anti-SLAPP protections specifically covering economic crime. Those provisions came into force in June 2025.
Labour has repeatedly promised wider legislation covering other forms of abusive legal action, but has yet to deliver the comprehensive reform campaigners have sought.
So once again, we have Labour making solemn declarations about what it intends to do, while its own record raises questions it would undoubtedly prefer not to answer.
There are legitimate reasons for protecting confidential information, including national security, the identities of victims and the integrity of investigations. Privacy rights also matter.
What cannot be justified is allowing wealth, influence or political connections to determine who faces public scrutiny and who escapes it.
The principle of press freedom cannot depend on whether the person facing scrutiny is a television celebrity, a wealthy businessman or somebody with friends in Downing Street.
And it certainly cannot depend on whether the resulting headlines are politically convenient.
The political establishment should not get a free pass
What makes this latest performance particularly galling is the implication that the problem of powerful people obstructing scrutiny exists somewhere outside politics.
As though the greatest threats to transparency come exclusively from celebrities, wealthy businessmen and their expensive lawyers.
Political power can be every bit as formidable as financial power.
Governments control information. Political parties control internal disciplinary procedures. Influential organisations employ expensive advisers and communications specialists.
And when those organisations become uncomfortable with scrutiny, the temptation to control the narrative can be enormous.
That is precisely why independent journalism matters.
Yet the Labour Together revelations demonstrate the kind of troubling conduct that can arise when political organisations turn their attention towards the journalists investigating them.
There is no need to pretend these episodes were all legally identical. An injunction, an internal disciplinary process and an investigation into journalists are different things.
But they all raise an essential question: how much scrutiny are powerful people prepared to tolerate when they are the subject of it?
That is the test Labour should be judged against.
Not the polished ministerial statements. Not the reassuring promises from the Commons dispatch box. And certainly not another announcement designed to demonstrate how terribly concerned ministers are.
Actions.
If Labour is serious about protecting journalists, it should deliver comprehensive anti-SLAPP legislation, support the confidentiality of journalistic sources and ensure that politically connected organisations cannot escape legitimate scrutiny.
It should also explain how it intends to prevent the kind of conduct exposed in the Labour Together investigation from happening again.
Because Britain does not need lectures about press freedom from a Government unwilling to confront uncomfortable questions within its own political ranks.
Labour cannot credibly condemn the powerful for trying to control what the public reads while brushing aside serious concerns about the treatment of journalists by organisations connected to its own rise to power.
The British public deserves a free press that can investigate everyone, regardless of wealth, celebrity, connections or political allegiance.
And if ministers really want to demonstrate that nobody is above scrutiny, there is an obvious place to begin.
Look in the mirror, Labour. The public is watching.
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