MORGAN McSweeney may have departed Downing Street but does he still have the Prime Minister’s ear?
Well it depends on who you ask. It also depends on how you define “advise”.
Questions have been asked in the wake of a Daily Mail story on Saturday which said that McSweeney, the PM’s former righthand man who fell on his sword over the Peter Mandelson debacle, was urging Keir Starmer to block Andy Burnham from running for Parliament.
The Greater Manchester Mayor’s by-election race is the prelude to his bigger battle to try and replace Starmer in No 10.
The astute among you will notice that McSweeney’s advice, if it really was offered, was not heeded by the PM as Burnham was in fact approved as the Labour candidate in Makerfield. In fact, in a stitch-up McSweeney himself would have approved of, Burnham was the only candidate on the shortlist.
Perhaps McSweeney’s advice is being ignored. That would explain the Burnham discrepancy, but it wouldn’t explain why Downing Street is being so cagey about the whole thing.
When the Mail story came out at the weekend, No 10 flatly denied the report saying it was “not right”.
But when fresh questions were put on Wednesday, they were less forthcoming. A spokesperson for the PM would not deny reports that McSweeney was once again advising Starmer.
It’s understood McSweeney has not been into Downing Street but obviously that does not prevent him from getting in touch by other means.
As Starmer hagiographer Tom Baldwin put it in a piece for The Observer this weekend: “Although Morgan McSweeney has not set foot in Downing Street since leaving in February, his presence lingers there like a ghost and, of course, its former chief of staff does not have to take physical form to advise the prime minister on how to conduct a street fight.”
McSweeney was bad enough in corporeal form, quite why Starmer should think he’d be steered better by his ghostly apparition is anyone’s guess.
