Sir Keir Starmer is battling to save his premiership after the dramatic resignation on Sunday of his most trusted aide Morgan McSweeney, as Labour MPs and officials warn that his job is still in grave peril.
McSweeney’s resignation statement, in which the Downing Street chief of staff took responsibility for the decision to appoint Lord Peter Mandelson as ambassador to Washington, has triggered calls for Starmer to bear a similar level of blame.
Starmer will on Monday attempt to regain the initiative, with allies saying he has “instructed officials to move at pace to deliver change”. But his closest helper will no longer be at his side to implement it.
One person close to the prime minister said McSweeney’s departure left him “very exposed”, adding: “Morgan is effectively saying that he advised Keir to make a bad decision, which he made.”
In a sign of Starmer’s precarious position, Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary who had been sent out to defend him on Sunday, prefaced one of his answers in a BBC interview with the words: “If the prime minister stays.”
McSweeney’s exit came after a frenetic 48 hours of discussions in Number 10, with questions about whether the chief of staff should quit or wait until after the Gorton and Denton by-election on February 26, which Labour could lose.
People close to Starmer said they were worried that McSweeney, a Mandelson protégé, would incur more damage in the coming days with the release of documents relating to the peer’s stint as US envoy last year.
In a sign of growing bad blood at the heart of government, one ally of McSweeney said: “There would be no Labour government without Morgan. For him to be hung out to dry like this has left yet another bad taste in the mouths of those who worked for him.”
The departure of McSweeney will appease many Labour MPs who saw him as leading a factional battle inside government: he comes from the right of the governing party. But it leaves Starmer without an ally who has been at the heart of his operation for six years.
“They cut off a gangrenous limb, but Morgan was his right hand,” one person close to Number 10 said.
Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, deputy chiefs of staff under McSweeney, were named acting chiefs of staff on Sunday. The choice of a permanent top aide to deliver on the government’s sclerotic programme is now an urgent priority for Starmer.
One minister said: “Morgan takes decisions and makes things happen.” A usually loyal Labour MP said the resignation of McSweeney probably spelled “the endgame for Starmer”.
A Labour frontbencher said Downing Street would undertake a “four-day sprint to recess”, in the hope that MPs would calm down during the half-term break from Westminster, which starts on Thursday.
Despite McSweeney’s departure, some colleagues are still asking who else was involved with the ill-fated decision to give Mandelson the plum job in Washington.
The peer was sacked last September after emails released by the US government showed he offered support to Jeffrey Epstein in 2008, shortly before the financier pleaded guilty to a charge of soliciting prostitution from minors.
One Labour figure said: “Morgan didn’t make the appointment, so while he has made an honourable decision on accountability, he shouldn’t be the one taking responsibility.”
Questions are being asked by Labour MPs about Jonathan Powell, the national security adviser and another New Labour veteran, and whether he could have stopped the appointment. Allies of Powell have insisted that he expressed reservations about the selection of Mandelson.
David Lammy, Starmer’s deputy and former foreign secretary, has sought to distance himself from the scandal; friends of his told the Sunday Telegraph that he had not been in favour of the appointment.
That is at odds with a FT report in September 2024, which described how Lammy had swung his support behind the former cabinet secretary and was “privately rooting for Mandelson”. Although Lammy’s spokesperson did not comment at the time, his team never disputed the article.
A trove of files released by the US government last month revealed the convicted paedophile Epstein had sent Mandelson $75,000 when he was a backbench MP in 2003 and 2004.
Mandelson is also being investigated by the Metropolitan Police — and has quit the House of Lords — after the documents also revealed he forwarded market-sensitive government information to Epstein while he was business secretary and de facto deputy prime minister under Gordon Brown.
The furore is likely to intensify this week when parliament’s intelligence and security committee is expected to release a trove of thousands of documents relating to Mandelson’s appointment and his communications with serving ministers and officials.
One potential tipping point is the Gorton and Denton by-election in Greater Manchester this month, in which Labour is expected to fare badly in a constituency it had previously held.
Veteran Labour MP Graham Stringer said on Sunday: “After the local elections [on May 7] — and the indications are that we will lose badly — we will have to look at how we improve things, and my view is that means a new leader.”
Several MPs have reported public anger about the Mandelson scandal among voters. “There is real alarm about hostility from electors on the streets,” said one leftwing Labour MP.
He said most Labour MPs wanted McSweeney sacked, whereas there was only a “significant minority” determined to oust Starmer. “Though we think Starmer can’t survive much without McSweeney,” the MP added.
Dozens of MPs are gunning for a rival to mount a leadership challenge, even though they have failed so far to coalesce around a clear strategy to oust Starmer and there remain serious questions about the viability of the likely candidates.
Health secretary Wes Streeting had a close relationship with Mandelson himself and is widely seen as equally tarnished by the scandal.
Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, a darling of the Labour left who led calls in the House of Commons for the release of the Mandelson files, has not yet resolved her tax affairs following her own scandal relating to unpaid stamp duty on a home purchase.
A number of other names are also circulating, including defence secretary John Healey and the left-field insurgent Al Carns.
Carns was tipped to be a future chief of the defence staff had he stayed in the military and has won support for an impressive back-story untainted by internal Labour politics.
One senior Labour official said that the “mood feels very similar to when Boris Johnson and Liz Truss were at the end of their premierships”.
This week “is pretty unpredictable”, they added. “If a cabinet minister resigned, things could fall apart for Starmer.”
Additional reporting by Lucy Fisher and David Sheppard