As the festive period approaches, it’s fair to say the season of goodwill has not reached Downing Street yet, with reports over the weekend of a “very shouty” row between Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.
Streeting demanded to know whether No. 10 was the source of an apparent pre-emptive strike accusing him of leadership plotting, said The Sunday Times.
Starmer was forced to tell the House of Commons last week that he had full confidence in his chief aide, saying: “Morgan McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for this country”.
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But Starmer has been urged to fire McSweeney by former Labour home secretary David Blunkett, who said he should be replaced by someone who can “manage people well”.
Darker sequel
McSweeney “derives his power and influence from his track record as a political strategist”, said the BBC – he masterminded Labour’s landslide 2024 general election victory and Starmer’s 2020 Labour leadership bid.
But this isn’t the first time he has been the subject of the story rather than the conduit. Back in September the “heat” was on him because of the “furore” around the failure of his Labour Together campaign group to declare donations to the Electoral Commission, said The New Statesman.
But “the sequel is more serious, darker even”. Although the “picture is murky”, the “subject is clear: a lack of control at the centre”.
After this fresh crisis “roiled” Downing Street, talk has “inevitably turned” to how long McSweeney can “cling to his job”, said The Telegraph. There’s a “broader dysfunction within the Downing Street regime”, with insiders saying a “toxic atmosphere is paralysing the government and contributing to a collapse in support for Labour”.
Brain dead
But while “critics” say McSweeney has “lost control” of Downing Street, “allies” say he has “become a scapegoat when chaos strikes” in No. 10. They say that the “graveyard of Westminster careers is littered with the CVs of former Downing Street ‘svengalis’ who paid the price for the failures of their administrations”, such as Alastair Campbell and Dominic Cummings.
“The barbs against McSweeney are a modern twist on the words that have echoed down English history from dissidents who don’t want to go after the principal: ‘God save the King and damn his accursed ministers’,” said The New Statesman.
There is “a hope, possibly a vain one,” that McSweeney’s exit would make Labour “cuddly and nice again”. But what would it “actually bring”? Would Starmer, the “north London luvvy and former human rights barrister”, come “out of his shell”, or would his premiership be left “essentially brain dead” and “living on borrowed time”?
A Labour minister told The Independent that Starmer should “bring in someone that actually knows what they are doing” and who understands the parliamentary Labour Party. That might mean that McSweeney is replaced or someone is brought in to work alongside him, “but it can’t go on like this”.
But asked about McSweeney’s future, one senior Labour figure said he was: “Toast.”
