It was clear in the middle of last week to anyone familiar with British politics that Morgan McSweeney, chief of staff to British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was going to go. The only surprise was that he lasted until Sunday to resign and issue his statement.
Once the British press smell blood in the water it is a feeding frenzy. There is no Irish equivalent. Irish journalists are far more deferential and prone to doffing the cap. In the UK, the pressure is relentless, the 24 hour media machine must be fed. Enemies circle. It becomes almost impossible for the government to continue: someone must go. The sacrificial lamb this time was McSweeney. The hope in Downing Street is that this kill will be enough to keep Starmer in his job.
(Above: Malcolm Tucker feels the heat in The Thick of It.)
The bitter irony is that McSweeney, the Irish man, proved much more loyal to the British state than the Prince of Darkness, Lord Mandelson. I spoke about his treachery here.
In a statement released on Sunday, McSweeney said: “After careful reflection, I have decided to resign from the government. The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself.” Our country, that country being the adopted one for McSweeney, Britain.
McSweeney has always been interesting. His backstory is well known. The Guardian, “The grandson of an IRA courier, McSweeney was born in Macroom, County Cork, in April 1977. Although his parents canvassed for Ireland’s centre-right Fine Gael party, McSweeney showed little appetite for politics in his youth. His passion was sport: playing hurling and watching Liverpool FC. He moved to London as a teenager and worked on building sites before gaining a degree in politics and marketing from Middlesex University. He is said to have been inspired to join the Labour party by its role in negotiating the Good Friday agreement.”
This is how the Telegraph describes him, “Sir Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney were always an unlikely match: a stuffy London lawyer paired with a maverick small-town boy with a southern Irish drawl and an acute understanding of working-class Britain.”
Irishman, is how the British press sometimes refers to McSweeney, Corkman is the handle often used by the Irish media. McSweeney was the mastermind of the last Labour election victory having worked his way up from the inside. The leftwing Guardian, “In the early hours of 5 July 2024, Keir Starmer arrived at Tate Modern in central London to celebrate Labour’s landslide election victory. As he prepared to address the throng of cheering activists, he was flanked by two people: his wife, Victoria, and his closest aide, Morgan McSweeney.
A reluctant McSweeney, it was reported, was dragged on stage by the soon-to-be prime minister to a roar from the party’s foot soldiers. A few years previously, this moment had seemed impossible. Many believe that, without McSweeney, it would have been.”
The rightwing Telegraph, “within Labour, McSweeney will be forever remembered for his role in securing the party’s landslide election victory just 19 months ago, having worked for Starmer since 2020.
Credited with a virtually unrivalled understanding of Labour’s increasingly disaffected working-class voters, he tempered Starmer’s liberal instincts on issues such as Brexit and immigration. So it came as a surprise to many in the party when the then opposition leader chose to remove the Irishman as his chief of staff and replace him with Sue Gray, the former mandarin and Partygate inquisitor, just 10 months before the election was called.” After a disastrous first months in government however McSweeney was brought back to the centre, where he pushed through Labour’s tougher stance on immigration. He built up enemies on the left of the party.
McSweeney is married to a fellow Labour MP. He was also a protégé of Peter Mandelson. Mandelson once said of McSweeney, “I don’t know who and how and when he was invented. But whoever it was, they will find their place in heaven.”
McSweeney pushed for his mentor to be appointed to the prestigious position of the ambassador to the United States. This decision came back to haunt him when the full extent of Mandelson’s treachery and close links to Epstein came to light last week. On Sunday the inevitable resignation came.
There are plenty of Labour MPs past and present with strong Irish heritage who climbed to the top of the party. But I don’t know of any Irish person who masterminded an election victory and became chief of staff of the Prime Minister.
What is also interesting is how the British press treat McSweeney. His loyalty to the British state has never once been called into question even by the rightwing press such as the Telegraph, the Daily Mail or GB News.
It was McSweeney the Irish man who forced the Labour party, whose metropolitan north London elites moved further away from its working class northern roots, back to the centre ground. This was the party whose MP Emily Thornberry once sneered at the St George’s flag during a by-election.
The working class and patriotic Red Wall of the north, having voted for Brexit (something Starmer fiercely opposed), then swung hard to Tory Boris Johnson in 2019. It was McSweeney who got them back. “Not only had the party clawed back most of its “red wall”, it had triumphed in a handful of seats that had never before had a Labour MP. McSweeney was credited as the brains behind one of the most staggering political comebacks in British history.”
Why? McSweeney moved to Britain when he was 17 and joined the Labour party, reportedly because of the success of the Good Friday Agreement. Safe to say he integrated. McSweeney also said in his statement, “this has not been an easy decision. Much has been written and said about me over the years but my motivations have always been simple: I have worked every day to elect and support a government that puts the lives of ordinary people first and leads us to a better future for our great country. Only a Labour government will do that.” Our great country – Britain. He concluded that it “has been the honour of my life to serve.”
McSweeney served the British Labour party for most of his adult life. He’s proven a lot more loyal to that country than Mandelson ever did.