The name Morgan McSweeney may not be on the lips of people down in the pub or at the school gate but it is one that those in the Westminster bubble are obsessed with.
Labour MPs are particularly aware of the Downing Street chief of staff’s power and importance, either as something they consider to be a toxic poison at the heart of government or the means of future preferment and promotion.
So reports that Sir Keir Starmer was “screaming” at his chief of staff, telling him “you were supposed to protect me” over the Lord Mandelson debacle is a sign that this government is in incredibly serious trouble.
There is even a widespread belief in Westminster’s corridors that this is not Keir Starmer’s government at all, but rather Morgan McSweeney’s. The prime minister is in many ways the front man for a project which is actually being directed by an unelected official in Downing Street.
So when people question Sir Keir Starmer’s judgement on appointments, particularly the head scratching catastrophe of sending Lord Mandelson to Washington DC as the UK’s ambassador, they are in reality questioning the PM’s judgement in doing what McSweeney advises.
Recent tales from the big ministerial reshuffle seem to underline this point.
The three people removed from the cabinet were all people McSweeney wanted out, according to sources.
Angela Rayner may have self-destructed over her tax affairs, but there had been a long concerted campaign by the Blairite wing of the party, of which McSweeney is the prime member, to remove her. Who was it who authorised the revealing and damaging readout about Ms Rayner’s comments on immigration in a cabinet meeting just before the summer? That would only have happened with McSweeney’s blessing.
Lucy Powell – now apparently on a vengeance mission running for deputy leader against the Starmer/ McSweeney candidate Bridget Phillipson – was removed as Commons leader because “she kept standing up to McSweeney and telling him he was wrong”, according to an ally of hers.
Ian Murray was replaced by Douglas Alexander as Scottish secretary “because of McSweeney’s obsession with Blair-era figures”. Mr Alexander, a very capable individual, was a minister and campaign chief in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments.
“McSweeney was desperate to get him in the cabinet, and Ian [Murray] was expendable,” a source told The Independent.
One of the footnotes of the reshuffle also saw McSweeney’s wife, Imogen Walker, inserted into the whips’ office. She was elected as MP for Hamilton and Clyde Valley in 2024 after he oversaw selections and parachuted hundreds of preferred candidates into winnable seats.
The 48-year-old’s apparent enthusiasm for figures from the Blair years is what drove him to not only push for Lord Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US but also try to prevent his sacking.
To understand the current project, you need to go back to the Corbyn years, when McSweeney was at the forefront in trying to save the party from disappearing forever down a far-left black hole.
As director of Labour Together, he effectively organised the fightback and handpicked Starmer as the man to take over after Corbyn and turn the ship around.
The success in the election last year, which McSweeney ran, was the vindication of that project, but unfortunately, they came into office without much of a policy plan.
And it all started with McSweeney removing an obstacle to his authority – Sue Gray, who had been brought in as the original chief of staff before he replaced her almost a year ago.
As the welfare crisis mounted before the summer, with scores of Labour MPs threatening to vote the government’s policy down, the calls to remove McSweeney grew very loud indeed. And they have not really quietened down. In fact, last week’s chaos with Mandelson made matters worse.
But here lies the problem. If this government is more a McSweeney government than a Starmer one, the prime minister may have the authority to sack his chief of staff, but where does it leave him?
Without McSweeney, Starmer is hugely weakened and the suggestions of a leadership coup by May next year become very realistic.
McSweeney’s problem is that he cannot orchestrate Starmer to be replaced either. A new leader will almost certainly be more left-leaning and will want to take the party in a new direction. That means he will be out too.
That gives the rather disturbing image of two men locked in a room together shouting at one another over the rapid demise of a government that has barely been in power for a year, but trapped with one another with no way out.
