Damage control

Will key aide's exit be enough to save the prime minister?

- Kiran Stacey Policy editor

For some Labour MPs, the sight of Keir Starmer accepting the resignation of his long-term consigliere, Morgan McSweeney, encapsulated everything they think is going wrong with the prime minister's leadership.

After days of mounting criticism over McSweeney’s role in advocating for the appointment of Peter Mandelson as Washington ambassador, the prime minister’s chief of staff left Downing Street on Sunday.

But while his departure was welcomed by some of the prime minister’s critics, others felt it displayed the kind of political passivity that they say has characterised Starmer’s time in office.

“The idea of Morgan being allowed to resign makes the PM look even weaker,” one MP said. “He should have sacked him - now he risks going down with Morgan.”

McSweeney enjoyed a level of access and power in Downing Street unseen since the days of Dominic Cummings under Boris Johnson.

Some believe it was McSweeney who, as head of the thinktank Labour Together, picked Starmer out as the leader for his centrist movement, rather the other way round.

McSweeney’s influence was so all-encompassing that one Labour source was quoted in a recent book as saying Starmer thought he was driving the train when actually he had been placed at the front of the driverless Docklands Light Railway.

To his supporters, McSweeney was the political genius who oversaw the overthrow of the hard left, the rise of Starmer as leader, and eventually, the historic landslide general election victory of 2024.