PRIME Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s right-hand man and key cabinet members are facing serious questions about their conduct after the publication of a book exposing the secrets of his ascent to power.

The Fraud, by investigative journalist Paul Holden, produces evidence that Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney may have deliberately deceived the Electoral Commission over the failure of right-wing pressure group Labour Together to declare more than £7 million in donations when he was its director.

Mr McSweeney has claimed that the failure, despite repeated promptings from the commission, was due to administrative error, but Mr Holden marshals documents which appear to show it was a decision by Labour Together, the central vehicle in a conspiracy to shift Labour to the right when it was under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

The book, which draws on a trove of information leaked from within the Labour Party, also says that an article Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood wrote promoting an information-gathering project for Labour Together contained several untruths.

It said that Labour Together was declaring all its funding, which it was not, and that it was not supporting any candidate in Labour’s 2020 leadership race to succeed Mr Corbyn, whereas it now openly boasts of its support for Sir Keir.

New Housing Secretary Steve Reed is accused in the book of using illegally leaked data for factional ends and of drawing up a list of ten Party members, four of them Jewish, to be investigated over antisemitism allegations.

And Cardiff West MP Alex Barros-Curtis, prior to the 2024 election Labour’s legal chief, is shown to have given false information to former party general secretary Jennie Formby about evidence in the inquiries into the 2020 leaked report into Labour’s handling of antisemitism complaints, according to the book.

Ms Mahmood, Mr Reed and Mr Barros-Curtis have all denied any allegations of wrongdoing put to them.

The Fraud pursues in detail one of the revelations in the leaked report, which exposed that Labour officials opposed to the Corbyn leadership had channelled party funds to the campaigns of favoured right-wing MPs during the 2017 election, behind the backs of the party leadership and the national campaign committee.

Mr Holden suggests that the scheme — known as the “Ergon House project” after the building it was directed from — may have broken the law, but that Labour has never investigated it nor assisted enquiries into the matter.

He has also revealed that, upon learning of his research, Labour Together apparently engaged private investigators to probe him and his family.  

The group was by then run by Josh Simons, now a Labour MP.