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Morgan McSweeney has resigned as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, as Britain’s Prime Minister Lord Peter Mandelson tries to appease angry Labor MPs and save his job in the fallout from the scandal.
Mandelson’s political protégé McSweeney’s exit had been called for by many backbenchers, but the departure of the prime minister’s closest ally leaves Starmer looking isolated and vulnerable.
McSweeney played a key role in advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the US and was blamed by many Labor MPs for the brutal ministerial reshuffle last September.
McSweeney’s decision to step down was confirmed in a phone call with Starmer on Sunday lunchtime, amid fears that future release of emails between him and Mandelson could further damage the chief of staff.
In a statement McSweeney said: “The decision to appoint peter mandelson Was wrong. He has damaged the trust in our party, our country and politics. When asked, I advised the Prime Minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice.
But McSweeney’s decision to take responsibility for Mandelson’s appointment has left Starmer’s opponents saying it is time the prime minister stopped blaming his own officials for mistakes. One minister said: “This has exposed Kiir.”
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said: “Keir Starmer needs to take responsibility for his terrible decisions. But he never does.”
McSweeney, widely credited with orchestrating Labour’s 2024 election victory and driving out hard-left elements from the ruling party, said in his resignation statement: “Responsibility in public life must be carried out when it matters most, not just when it is most convenient.”
In a sign of the deep malaise in Number 10, an aide to McSweeney said: “It is honorable for him to take responsibility, but no one will accept the idea that the responsibility is actually his to bear. It is now a pattern to remove loyal staff and MPs whenever the government gets into trouble.”
McSweeney’s resignation came as Starmer admitted last week that she had chosen Mandelson to be Britain’s ambassador to the US despite knowing about her ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, since the financier was jailed for child prostitution. Mandelson was fired last September.
Labor officials said that both Starmer and McSweeney decided it was “time to move on”, but that the government would not change policy as a result of the latter’s departure.
Stating that the Prime Minister wanted to “address the issues highlighted by the Mandelson revelations”, McSweeney called for a “fundamental overhaul” of the vetting process for senior officials.
The Metropolitan Police said this week that Mandelson was under criminal investigation over possible misconduct in public office after emails revealed he passed confidential government information to Epstein while he was business secretary and de facto UK deputy prime minister in 2009 and 2010.
Downing Street announced a separate official investigation into Mandelson’s conduct “during his tenure as a government minister” after the emails were published by the US Justice Department.
In recent months, McSweeney has become the focus of criticism among Labor MPs, who blame him for strategic missteps on policy and communications.
While Labor MPs were publicly and privately calling for McSweeney to leave, some said her departure would not resolve questions about Starmer’s decision-making and could also increase pressure on the Prime Minister.
Starmer – who has apologized to Epstein’s victims for giving her colleague the role of Britain’s envoy to the US – is set to intensify the Mandelson scandal after agreeing to allow Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to release a trove of documents relating to the appointment.
Mandelson’s communications with ministers and officials during his stay in Washington will also be published, with government officials estimating that up to 100,000 documents may have to be released.
Starmer believes some of the exchanges related to Mandelson’s investigation into the U.S. job will support his claim that the former ambassador “lied” about his relationship with Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
But other messages sent between Mandelson and Starmer’s team, including McSweeney’s, may be more problematic. Some of Mandelson’s private exchanges could particularly strain Britain’s relations with Donald Trump if they paint the US president in a bad light.
Starmer said of his late chief of staff: “He turned our party around after its worst-ever defeat and played a central role in running our election campaign.
“It is largely thanks to his dedication, loyalty and leadership that we won an overwhelming majority and we have a chance to transform the country.”
Starmer on Sunday appointed two of Downing Street’s deputy chiefs of staff, Vidya Aleckson and Jill Cuthbertson, as acting chiefs of staff.
Labor figures said other candidates to take up the role, which is at the heart of Number 10 operations, on a permanent basis include Varun Chandra, now Downing Street’s chief business adviser and former boss of consultancy firm Hakluyt, and Tom Baldwin, Starmer’s biographer and former Labor director of communications.
Mandelson once said of McSweeney, the former director of the influential think-tank Labor Together: “I don’t know who, how or when invented it, but whoever it was… they will find their place in heaven.”
