Trevor Chinn, a director who has also donated more than £175,000, is a senior adviser to one of the world’s largest private equity firms. Ian Laming, CEO of Tristan Capital Partners, had never made a political donation before – but he broke that record by giving the group £100,000. Since Starmer won the party leadership, Labour Together has raised £4 million, a sum that makes the right-wing Tufton Street think tanks, so often the target of criticism from the left, seem almost insignificant by comparison.

Morgan McSweeney was director of Labour Together between 2017 and 2020. His CV is a testament to how the organisation first exploited the Labour Party hierarchy and now targets the British state. After 2020, he worked for Starmer, who had just become Labour leader and on whose election campaign Sweeney had worked. Today, McSweeney is the government’s head of political strategy, working from 10 Downing Street.

It is a similar story when you consider how a number of people associated with Labour Together have been elevated to Parliament. Josh Simons, who replaced McSweeney as the organisation’s director, is now the MP for Makerfield. Other members who have since entered the House of Commons include Hamish Falconer, Chris Curtis, Luke Murphy and Gordon McKee.

Even more notably, the organisation provided over £300,000 for staff costs and secondments to various members of the then Shadow Cabinet – now Cabinet – including Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper. This, alongside direct funding of candidates, is not something think tanks usually do. Labour Together should therefore be seen more as, in the words of former MP Jon Cruddas, Labour’s “first Super PAC”. Internally, it aims to consolidate the power of the leadership and the right-wing party. But when it comes to governing the country, the funds come from those who want Labour to remain financially dependent. They would call it “political moderation” but essentially it means failing to address the country’s many challenges and leaving everything as it is.

Momentum – the subject of so much criticism in the press – was largely about ordinary people trying to influence the political process. It was often chaotic and poorly organised, but it was immeasurably more democratic than Labour Together. After all, no one can join the latter and its political priorities are not determined by membership.

And yet the organisation is not only trying to shape the ruling party through personnel and policies, but also – as the Sargeant story shows – the contours of the British state. Who controls it? And whose interests does it serve? The answers to these questions are not in sight.