Who is Starmer’s chief of staff?

Morgan McSweeney, who was instrumental in the rise of Sir Keir Starmer, is at the center of a political row after a wave of anonymous briefings revealed tensions at the heart of the government.

Senior ministers called on Sir Keir to bring order to the Downing Street operation run by his private secretary McSweeney, after media outlets reported that his cabinet colleagues were planning leadership challenges.

Some in the government accused the 48-year-old adviser of being behind the briefings and importing into Downing Street a culture of off-the-record chats with opposition journalists.

But Sir Keir said he was pleased that briefings that cabinet ministers were plotting to oppose him were not coming from No 10.

McSweeney did not comment directly on the criticisms; Like most people in behind-the-scenes positions in government, he does not appear before TV cameras to defend himself.

And in any situation he always tried to keep a low profile. Until recently there were very few photographs of him in circulation.

McSweeney’s friends told the BBC he would not be stepping down because he had “done absolutely nothing wrong”.

McSweeney derives his power and influence from his background as a political strategist; He plotted Labour’s landslide victory in the 2024 general election and Sir Keir’s 2020 Labor leadership candidacy.

Like previous powerful but unelected advisers at Downing Street such as Dominic Cummings or Alastair Campbell, he has been the target of negative stories.

His closeness to Sir Keir as an experienced political operator against a relatively inexperienced prime minister means he could be seen as the Prime Minister’s “surrogate”.

An ally of the Prime Minister told the BBC: “They’re going after Morgan because they want to get Keir.

“This is not a parliamentary party war, it is a Labor elite war.”

McSweeney emerged victorious from an internal power struggle to become Sir Keir’s chief of staff last year. Sue Gray’s dramatic resignation.

Quiet, unassuming, even shy, McSweeney is known, especially publicly, for being obsessed with winning, constantly fearful of complacency and always aware of Labor’s track record of losing far more elections than it wins.

He was born in Macroom, County Cork, and grew up comfortably, the son of an accountant and a retired office worker, according to a profile by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund in The Times newspaper.

He moved to London in his youth and initially worked on construction sites before gaining a place at the London School of Economics.

According to the book Get In by Maguire and Pogrund, he left school and went to live on an Israeli kibbutz for six months, before returning to London to study at Middlesex University and obtaining a degree in politics and marketing.

McSweeney later joined the Labor Party under Tony Blair and worked in an assistant role at the party’s headquarters.

He then went to work for Steve Reed, now housing secretary, but then a councilor in Lambeth, south London, where he was trying to regain control of the party from the far left.

In 2006, McSweeney helped lead the party’s successful campaign to take control of the council, with Reed becoming leader.

His reputation as a skilled campaign strategist was further cemented in Barking and Dagenham, where the far-right, anti-immigrant British National Party gained support and hoped to win its first parliamentary seat in 2010.

McSweeney played a key role in the fight to defeat the BNP in the region with a campaign focused on local issues.

However, their campaigns were not always successful; In 2015 he ran Blairite Liz Kendall’s bid to become Labor leader, receiving just 4.5% of the vote in a contest won by Jeremy Corbyn.

In 2017 McSweeney became director of the think tank Labor Together, which opposes the party’s rule under Corbyn and supports Sir Keir.

The Electoral Commission later fined Labor Together £14,250 for late and inaccurate reporting of donations during McSweeney’s time as director.

The fine subsequently sparked calls from Conservative MPs for a deeper investigation into Labour’s campaign finances. The Election Commission decided not to reopen the investigation.

At the time of sentencing, McSweeney had left Labor Together to run Sir Keir’s 2020 leadership bid, later becoming his opposition private secretary, where he played a key role in removing Corbyn supporters from positions of power.

The Times reported that Starmer laid out his three-year plan here: detoxify the party, become an effective opposition and then outperform the Conservatives on crime, defense and the economy to win power.

As Labour’s campaign director, McSweeney was tasked with designing the party’s strategy for last July’s general election, including a selection process for Labour’s parliamentary candidates that sidelined left-wing figures and sparked fierce rows with the union movement.

Among the new Labor MPs to be elected was his wife Imogen Walker, a former councilor in Lambeth who now represents Hamilton and Clyde Valley.

McSweeney has been credited with keeping Labor HQ focused on winning back “hero voters” – pro-Leave voters who backed Boris Johnson in 2019 but are willing to get behind Labour.

He also oversaw the deployment of money and teams to marginal constituencies; This was mostly to the detriment of senior Labor figures in safe seats.

The result was a historic landslide; Labor won more than 200 seats despite increasing its vote share by less than two percentage points.