Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, was told to label hundreds of thousands of pounds of “hidden” donations as an “admin error”, according to a newly-leaked email.

Mr McSweeney is facing growing pressure over his substantial donations to his Labour Together campaign group, which helped Sir Keir win the party’s leadership election in 2020.

The Electoral Commission (EC) previously slapped the group with a fine in 2021 due to its handling of donations.

Mr McSweeney was instructed by a senior Labour lawyer, Gerald Shamash, to drop a claim that he had been told donations worth some £739,492 did not have to be declared, the Daily Mail revealed.

Sir Keir’s chief of staff was told that the EC could have to take action unless he provided proof for the claim, which was unsubstantiated.

If Labour Together was unable to satisfy questions surrounding the donations “it may be best to simply base our case… as down to an admin error”, the leaked email said.

The Electoral Commission later fined the group just over £14,000 for 20 breaches of donation rules.

The Conservative Party has now demanded the EC – and potentially police – to probe the handling of the matter.

Conservative Party chairman Kevin Hollinrake said: “The evidence is clear – Morgan McSweeney has been caught red-handed hiding hundreds of thousands of pounds which helped install Keir Starmer as Labour Leader.

“This latest scandal at the very heart of government is incredibly serious – and potentially criminal – yet Keir Starmer has expressed his full confidence in his chief of staff, once again demonstrating his poor judgment and raising serious questions.

“Nothing-to-see-here Keir may think he can ride this one out as he tried to over the Mandelson-Epstein scandal, or perhaps he is too weak to fire a chief of staff who tells him what to think, but Conservatives will not stop fighting until we get to the truth.

“That is why we are calling on the Electoral Commission and the police to urgently investigate.”

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Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy waved away calls for a police probe.

Mr Lammy told Times Radio: “In opposition – 14 years in opposition – Labour Together was one of a group of organisations designed to get the Labour Party back in the groove with the British people and positioned to win once more and Labour Together was integral in achieving.

“I’m not surprised that the Tories are muck-raking. I’m not surprised that they’re attempting to destabilise an organisation that played that role.

“But I really don’t believe that there’s anything to see here.

“And certainly my contact with Labour Together was really about policy and about policy that would set us up to win the General Election, as we went on to do.”

According to a biography written about the Prime Minister, Mr McSweeney starting offering Sir Keir advice even before Jeremy Corbyn led Labour to a crushing defeat at the 2019 General Election.

Sir Keir’s now-chief of staff also offered the Prime Minister hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of polling data.

Downing Street has yet to answer concerns surrounding Sir Keir’s chief of staff’s stint at Labour Together.

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