josh simons has said he was “naive” and “so sorry” in his first full interview since leaving his Cabinet Office post. He quit on 28 February (ET) after facing claims that the think tank he used to run commissioned research into the sourcing and origins of a newspaper story about undeclared donations. He told Laura Kuenssberg and Paddy O’Connell he had been motivated by concern over confidential material and did not set out to smear journalists.
Josh Simons: the core facts
Simons resigned as a Cabinet Office minister following revelations that the think tank he formerly led, Labour Together, paid APCO Worldwide at least £30, 000 to look into the sourcing, funding and origins of a story about its donations. APCO’s report included personal details about a journalist, including material about the journalist’s Jewish beliefs and wider claims about that reporter’s ideological stance and past reporting. Simons says he approached APCO because he had been told the firm was “credible, serious, international” and could check whether material had been circulating on the dark web.
Immediate reactions and direct remarks
“I was naive and there’s a lot I’ve learned from it and there are things I would have done differently, ” simons said in the interview. He also said, “I never sought to smear” the journalists who were the subject of the research. The prime minister launched an ethics investigation before Simons announced his resignation, and the prime minister’s ethics adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, later found that Simons had not broken any rules.
Quick context
The controversy erupted after a story about undeclared donations at the think tank prompted the commissioning of external research. Labour Together engaged APCO Worldwide to investigate what had been published and why that material had emerged ahead of the election campaign.
What’s next
With the ethics adviser having cleared his conduct of rule-breaking, attention will remain on the boundaries between political research and the handling of journalists’ personal information. josh simons said he has learned lessons from the episode and indicated changes he would have made in hindsight; questions over the scope and oversight of commissioned research are likely to persist as political and institutional actors review procedures and public scrutiny continues.
