Keir Starmer cannot survive as prime minister without Morgan McSweeney
TThe name Morgan McSweeney may not be on people’s lips in the pub or at the school gate, but it’s a name those inside the Westminster bubble are obsessed with.
Labor MPs have always been aware of the power and importance of the Downing Street chief of staff; He considers this power to be either a toxic poison at the heart of the government or a tool for future preference and promotion.
So, as Labor MPs tell Keir Starmer he must sack his chief of staff or potentially lose his own job, it reveals that the prime minister is in serious trouble.
There were even occasional murmurs in the corridors of Westminster that this was McSweeney’s government, not Starmer’s, and that the prime minister was actually spearheading a project led by an unelected official in Downing Street.
Stories about the latest ministerial reshuffle highlight his impact.
According to sources, all three people removed from the cabinet were people McSweeney wanted to remove.
Angela Rayner may have been forced to resign over tax matters, but the Blairite wing of the party, of which McSweeney is a key member, had long waged a concerted campaign to oust her. Who allowed Rayner’s comments on immigration to be read in a revealing and damaging way at the cabinet meeting held just before the summer? This could only happen with McSweeney’s approval.
Lucy Powell, who returned after winning the election as the party’s deputy leader, was removed from the House of Commons leadership because she “continued to oppose McSweeney and tell him he was wrong,” according to an ally.
Ian Murray was replaced by Douglas Alexander as Scottish secretary “due to McSweeney’s obsession with Blair-era figures”. A highly talented individual, Alexander was a minister and campaign chief in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
“McSweeney was desperate to get him into cabinet and Ian was expendable,” a source said Independent.
But there is now growing anger towards Mr McSweeney over his links to Lord Mandelson.
According to reports, the 48-year-old not only pushed for Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador but also tried to prevent his removal.
To understand the current project you need to go back to the Corbyn years, when McSweeney was at the forefront of trying to save the party from disappearing forever into a far-left black hole.
As director of Labor Together, he effectively organized the fight and named Starmer as the man to take over from Corbyn and turn the ship around.
Labour’s success in the general election in which McSweeney ran was a validation of this project, but unfortunately they came into office without much of a policy plan.
And it all started when McSweeney removed an obstacle to his authority: Sue Gray had been brought in as his original chief of staff before succeeding him.
As the welfare crisis escalated last year, calls for McSweeney to be sacked became very loud indeed, with scores of Labor MPs threatening to vote to reject the government’s policy. And they haven’t been quiet since then.
But the Mandelson scandal stunned them.
But therein lies the problem. If this government is more of a McSweeney government than a Starmer government, the prime minister may have the power to sack the chief of staff, but where does that leave him?
Without McSweeney, Starmer is greatly weakened and suggestions of a leadership coup within a few weeks become very realistic.
