Consortium News: 11-02-2026,
Declassified UK reporter John McEvoy was among the journalists probed by a PR company hired by Labour Together, which has ties to the top of the U.K. government, Phil Miller reports.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer outside his office in London on the way to take questions in Parliament, October 2025. (Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street/Flickr/ CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
By Phil Miller
Declassified UK
A think tank with ties to the top of the Labour government paid a PR firm £30,000 to investigate journalists from media outlets including Declassified UK, it has emerged.
Declassified‘s chief reporter John McEvoy was among the journalists targeted by the group Labour Together in November 2023, according to a report by Democracy for Sale.
Labour Together turned to PR firm APCO Worldwide for help after media revelations about its undeclared funding, which resulted in a penalty from the Electoral Commission.
The PR firm, which has also represented Israel’s largest arms firm Elbit Systems, was reportedly tasked with profiling journalists that might be investigating Labour Together’s funding.
U.K. Government Minister Josh Simons in a 2024 official portrait. (Roger Harris/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0)
McEvoy had not, at that point, written about Labour Together for Declassified. However he believes an article he wrote in 2020 for The Canary could have put him on their radar.