Morgan McSweeney, the former chief of staff to the Prime Minister, has just finished speaking at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. He was grilled for over two hours about the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the United States, over which he resigned in February. Here are seven things we learnt from the session.
He regrets the Mandelson affair
Morgan McSweeney began this rare public appearance with a statement of contrition. He said that his advice to the Prime Minister to appoint Mandelson as ambassador was a “serious error of judgement” and that his resignation from his No 10 chief of staff role was evidence that he had taken responsibility for that. Later in the hearing, he said that, when the Bloomberg story showing further evidence of Mandelson’s involvement with Epstein appeared in September, “it was like a knife through my soul”. This did not quite explain why, in that case, the Prime Minister stood up at PMQs following the story’s publication and said he had full confidence in his ambassador (within 24 hours Mandelson had been sacked).
Mandelson is not McSweeney’s hero
McSweeney was keen to distance himself from Mandelson, despite consistent reporting on their close relationship and the fact that the former ambassador said of him “I don’t know who and how and when he was invented, but whoever it was, they will find their place in heaven.” McSweeney said Mandelson was not his “hero” and revealed that it was not he who first suggested Mandelson serve as US ambassador. Instead he said “I think the first person who put Mandelson’s name forward was Mandelson”, which got a laugh in the otherwise stolid committee room. He also speculated that Mandelson had briefed his ambitions to the press, perhaps in an attempt to bounce No 10 into a decision.
Mandelson’s role in Labour politics was more limited than reported
McSweeney strongly rejected claims that Mandelson had an intimate role in internal Labour politics before his appointment as ambassador. He directly addressed reports that Mandelson had been involved in informal and off-the-books stitch-ups of candidate selections before the 2024 election designed to freeze out left-wingers. “Mandelson had nothing to do with the selection or the vetting of any of our parliamentary candidates,” McSweeney said, “we did everything on the books”. He also rejected reports that Mandelson had been an influence on the September 2025 reshuffle that followed the downfall of Angela Rayner. McSweeney said that Mandelson had tried to mastermind the reshuffle but failed. He confirmed that Mandelson had been in No 10 on the day of the reshuffle but for unrelated reasons and said he received text messages from Mandelson making suggestions about how the government should be reconstructed. However, McSweeney said he did not reply to any of these messages until the end of the day, after the conclusion of the reshuffle, and that they did not have any influence on how it was carried out. “He was not involved in the reshuffle,” McSweeney said categorically.
Osborne was the other frontrunner for ambassador job
McSweeney confirmed at the committee what had already been reported by our political editor Ailbhe Rea, that former Tory chancellor George Osborne was a highly favoured candidate for the ambassador role in No 10. McSweeney also revealed that Osborne’s candidacy got so far advanced that due diligence was carried out by the government.
It was Trump’s second presidency that pushed the PM into picking Mandelson
On that note, McSweeney said that if Kamala Harris had won the presidential election in November 2024 instead of Donald Trump, Mandelson would likely not have been appointed. He said that with a Democrat president the PM would have had “a wider range of candidates available to him” but that Mandelson’s experience as an EU trade commissioner made him the obvious candidate to strike a trade deal with Trump.
McSweeney and Powell were also appointed before vetting
Of the controversial decision to confirm Mandelson’s appointment, start paying him and provide him with access to government building and classified briefings before he was vetted, McSweeney cited his own appointment before vetting and the case of that other Blair-era political appointment to a sensitive government job: Jonathan Powell as National Security Advisor. McSweeney said that Powell was likewise appointed before vetting concluded. He said: “As far as I remember, we appointed and then we began the DV. I was appointed before I began the DV work and that’s what tends to happen… It didn’t occur to me to ask because that’s how I saw the practices being put in place.”
It’s jobs for the boys and girls
On the revelation from Olly Robbins that No 10 had mentioned possible embassy appointments to its departing director of communications Matthew Doyle, McSweeney said that leaving the door open to future job opportunities was part of a “duty of care” to staff who were leaving the government. Pressed on this by committee chair Emily Thornberry, who said it sounded like “jobs for the boys” and contrary to equal opportunities practices, McSweeney said that the same would be done for departing female staff. Asked for an example, he said of his predecessor as chief of staff Sue Gray: “She’s now in the House of Lords.”
[Further reading: Starmer relies on fed-up but not mutinous MPs]
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Subscribe here to commentThe jobs for the boys bit was the one that stood out for me – since when has an employer’s duty of care included helping someone to find a new job!
Hopefully all of this will bury the Blairites and all the other right-wing boot boys in the Labour party for good. Not that the Left have anything to be cock a hoop about either mind you. Almost tempted to say a plague on both your houses. What a shower.