At low moments in his premiership Gordon Brown would thump the desk in front of him and declare: “Too. Many. Mistakes”. After the last week (indeed, the last year), Keir Starmer must feel much the same way.
The list of self-inflicted errors is now uncomfortably high: “freebiegate”, the appointment of Sue Gray, the winter fuel debacle, the welfare cuts fiasco, “island of strangers” (whether the speech or the apology) and the anointment of Peter Mandelson. A government that vowed to be a model of ethical probity increasingly resembles its predecessors (with Louise Haigh, Tulip Siddiq, Rushanara Ali, the deputy prime minister and the US ambassador all forced to depart amid scandal).
The sense of political decay is now familiar and so is the target of ire: Morgan McSweeney. Downing Street’s chief of staff is being blamed for Mandelson’s initial appointment and for his delayed departure. “All the prime minister’s advisers were saying we need to sack him – apart from Morgan,” one source tells Politico (a No 10 insider ripostes that McSweeney was “strongly of the opinion that Peter had to go” in the immediate aftermath of PMQs).
McSweeney’s critics – and there is a growing number on the Labour benches – hope that the pair will rise and fall together. The chief of staff began work at the party’s HQ in Millbank in 2001 when New Labour’s “third man” was the guiding spirit. But it was not until the Corbyn years that the two bonded with Mandelson – who rejected Blairite calls for a new centrist party – alighting on McSweeney as the man to save Labour.
After the latter’s appointment as No 10 chief of staff, Mandelson praised his “brainpower, political depth, strategic thinking and courage”, telling me that he would “bring what is badly needed: a sense of project, political definition and scrupulous attention to good people, good policy and good presentation”.
Mandelson’s subsequent appointment as US ambassador (forbidden under Sue Gray) represented a notable split between McSweeney and his Blue Labour brothers in arms. Maurice Glasman privately warned that Mandelson was “the wrong man at the wrong time in the wrong place”. Another sceptic, I’m told by government sources, was Jonathan Powell, Starmer’s national security adviser, who twice witnessed Mandelson resign during his time as Tony Blair’s chief of staff.
The soft left, for whom McSweeney has become a defining bête noire, is now all but demanding his departure. “Peter Mandelson’s inevitable sacking is what happens when you put your party faction’s interest before your party and before the country,” Mainstream, the new Andy Burnham-backed group (profiled on Monday), declared. “If Starmer keeps running a narrow and brittle political project it will break him and could break the Labour Party. We need a government and a party of all the talents and all the views.”
Much the same – if with less intensity – was said after the welfare debacle and the “island of strangers” speech. When Starmer apologised for the latter in an interview with his biographer Tom Baldwin, his progressive supporters believed they had found daylight between himself and McSweeney. (“It looked a bit like a hostage broke free from his captors for a day,” a former Labour strategist told me.) Talk of a “progressive pivot” – with Blue Labour banished from the castle – gathered pace.
But here’s the thing: little of the commentary suggesting that McSweeney can now be seamlessly discarded takes account of events just a week ago. The cabinet reshuffle left a government that, more than ever, is made in McSweeney’s image.
His ally Shabana Mahmood – the most authentic Blue Labour cabinet minister – became Home Secretary. His old Lambeth comrade Steve Reed became Housing Secretary. Pat McFadden, who toiled alongside McSweeney in Labour’s election “cell”, was made Work and Pensions Secretary for another tilt at welfare reform.
At the precise moment when he could have pursued an alternative course, Starmer doubled-down on McSweeney’s strategy and McSweeney’s people. The wisdom of this will be long debated inside Labour but the Prime Minister made his choice.
Starmer could discard McSweeney – the pair’s relationship has always been notably transactional – but only at the cost of rendering his government less coherent. And should McSweeney depart, the question of whether his master is next would grow ever more insistent.
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The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition was run by “the quad”: David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, the committee that would decide “all major matters of policy” and resolve disputes between the two parties.
After Labour entered power this structure was replicated with a new “quad” of Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Pat McFadden. Now, I’m told, a new “quint” will meet weekly to determine strategy: Starmer, David Lammy (in his new capacity as Deputy Prime Minister), Reeves, McFadden and Darren Jones (as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) with Morgan McSweeney also attending. Can they bring order to a disordered government?
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Inside Labour’s deputy leadership election]
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