Starmer-Mandelson latest: Morgan McSweeney resigns as PM’s chief of staff over US ambassador scandal

Cabinet minister Pat McFadden said: “The Prime Minister [has] He told Sky New’s Trevor Phillips this morning that he had acted in good faith regarding the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

Mr McFadden said: “Ultimately this is about the prime minister and I think he is appalled by what has happened.

“He has apologized to the victims and will certainly wish he had never made this appointment.

“But the real person who could save him from this was Peter Mandelson himself.”

Mr McFadden has now suggested Lord Mandelson give the money back and donate it to the charity addressing violence against women and girls.

McFadden also claims he does not remember meeting Mandelson with the prime minister before his appointment, despite having served under the former business secretary in Gordon Brown’s government.

Sir Keir Starmer is expected to address MPs at the Labor Party meeting in Parliament on Monday.

It was also reported earlier today that the prime minister hopes to provide an update on Monday on how the government is handling issues highlighted by the Lord Mandelson scandal.

Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart said: Sky News Trevor Phillips’ program this morning:

“This administration under Keir Starmer has failed, I think he has U-turned 14-15 times so far.

“It has been reset twice in the last five months and is now facing the worst political scandal of my life.

“And it’s time for a new kind of politics. I think that kind of politics is embodied by the honest, outspoken and decent Kemi Badenoch, and I’m very proud to be part of her shadow cabinet.”

Eddie Dempsey, chairman of the non-Labour RMT, said he believed Sir Keir Starmer should stand down.

The union boss told Telegram: “The Labor government is being obstructed by an elitist group exemplified by Morgan McSweeney, whose resignation is long overdue.

“But the remnants of New Labor are poisoning the well of the entire movement and opening the door to election defeat by alienating millions of working-class voters at Labour’s heartland.

“New Labor created a toxic political culture in which the Labor leadership turned on unionists and abandoned workers in favor of corrupt, wealthy elites, exemplified by Mandelson lobbying for bankers’ bonuses during the crash while ordinary people lost their homes and jobs.

“Mandelson’s relationship with a notorious pedophile and Starmer’s decision to hire him as US ambassador could be fatal for this government unless Labor changes its leadership and starts organizing society in the interests of working people rather than covering up money markets, spies and speculators.”

Your Party members have voted to stand as candidates in the 2026 Holyrood elections, with your party co-founder Zarah Sultana saying Scotland deserves better than “a politics disguised as progressivism”.

The vote took place at your Scottish Party’s founding conference in Dundee, with 69.8 per cent of party members supporting the move.

The candidate selection and policy development process is now expected to begin early next week.

The Coventry South MP said: “As the Westminster Government cracks down on people abroad, it is also punishing people in Scotland; people across the NHS, local government, schools and community services are feeling the pressure.

“Budgets are shrinking, expectations of controlled decline are presented as realism.

“And what is striking is how often this solution is supported by parties that claim to be progressive, by a political class that manages cuts and shortages rather than fights for transformation.

“Scottish people deserve better than this” policy “It is an approach that masquerades as progressivism as we continue to navigate the cuts that are destroying our societies, and that is what is happening to the SNP and the Greens.”

“You actually deserve better than that, and your Party exists to oppose cuts, and I’m glad you voted to put candidates on a no-cut platform, because that’s a socialist position.”

Earlier, Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the founding conference of the Your Scotland Party in Dundee and said if the people of Scotland wanted to hold an independence referendum “that is their choice”.

Mr Corbyn, who now sits as an independent MP at Westminster, said: “In my view, if people in Scotland and Scottish organizations want a referendum to decide the future of Scotland, that is their choice.

“This should not be determined by the UK Government at Westminster and I think we need to make that really, really clear.”

His Labor colleague Ayesha Hazarika said “there is no doubt that the prime minister was devastated with sadness, disappointment and regret this weekend as this story broke”. of Sky New Trevor Phillips’ panel this morning.

But he added: “This has been an absolutely shameful week for Labor, especially for a party that has always prided itself on standing up for women and girls.

“Over the last week I have never seen the anger, rage and devastation, especially from female MPs, colleagues, councilors and party members.”

More broadly, Hazarika said it’s “a story about male power and the boys’ club,” and said the Epstein files show “who runs the world, who has unfettered power, and how these men connect with each other, how they transact with each other and how they think they can operate with impunity, whether there’s procuring underage girls, whether some sort of confidential information about state secrets is being leaked to each other.”

She asked why there wasn’t “more curiosity” when it came to Peter Mandelson and questioned why he was considered the best person for the job.

Hazarika continued: “Everyone knew Peter Mandelson was swimming in these circles, mixing with these great men, that he was seduced by the wealth, the power, the men who owned yachts and all the culture that went with it.

“That’s why he was given the job, because the calculation was, ‘These are some pretty mean circles that the president of the United States moves in, and we need a guy who swims in these pools, sits in these hot tubs with these big guys, they can do business together.’

“And that transactional thinking was passed on to the victims.”

He added that Labor needed to ask “some very reflective, soul-searching questions” about why it had been “so seduced” by Mandelson over the decades.

Reacting to the departure of Morgan McSweeney as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, York Central Labor MP Rachael Maskell told the Press Association: “It’s a start, but we need to know how decisions are made in the Labor Party, including the role of Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney’s ‘kitchen cabinet’, and how this whole culture will change from factionalism to an inclusive culture that aims to listen and engage MPs and prevent future mistakes.” policy.”

Mr McSweeney reportedly assembled a “kitchen cabinet” of Labor figures, including Lord Mandelson, for dinners at the home of Labor grandmaster Lord Liddle when the party was in opposition.

Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, aides to Morgan McSweeney, have been appointed joint chiefs of staff to Sir Keir Starmer following Mr McSweeney’s departure.

Ms Alakeson is responsible for policy and delivery and has led Downing Street’s external relations.

Before taking office in the Labor Party, he established relationships with the business world as the party’s director of external affairs.

The former deputy chairman of the Solution Foundation think tank, he served in the No 10 strategy unit and the Treasury during the last Labor government.

Ms Cuthbertson runs the prime minister’s diary and has been described as Sir Keir’s best caretaker.

Having previously held similar roles for former Labor leaders Ed Miliband and Gordon Brown, she ran his office when he was leader of the opposition.

Keir Starmer’s position as prime minister is “untenable” after the Mandelson “disaster”, a senior Tory has said.

Alex Burghart, the Conservative Party’s shadow Cabinet Office chief, told Trevor Phillips: Sky News The Sunday Morning program states that this incident “relates to the Prime Minister’s decision” and is “very serious”.

Mr Burghart said: The “most dramatic evidence” against the prime minister in the Mandelson affair this week was his admission at Prime Minister’s Questions that he “knew Peter Mandelson had an ongoing relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein when he appointed him as ambassador in Washington”.

“This clearly brings the prime minister’s decision to the most serious problem, to the point where many people in his party no longer trust him,” he said.

“The Prime Minister must ultimately take responsibility for this because he is currently refusing to do so,” he continued.

Burghart also called Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador a “disaster”.

The Prime Minister has asked Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson to become acting chiefs of staff with immediate effect. Guard reported.

Both have served as deputy chiefs of staff since 2024.