{"id":414958,"date":"2026-02-08T17:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T17:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/414958\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T17:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T17:56:09","slug":"mcsweeney-quits-as-pms-chief-of-staff-saying-he-takes-full-responsibility-for-advising-mandelson-appointment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/414958\/","title":{"rendered":"McSweeney quits as PM’s chief of staff, saying he takes ‘full responsibility’ for advising Mandelson appointment"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Analysis\"Starmer relied on McSweeney’s instincts – so what now?published at 15:15 GMT<\/p>\n

15:15 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Laura Kuenssberg
Presenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Keir Starmer “is facing into the storm as the most talented campaigner in modern politics leaves his team. He would not be PM without Morgan, I wonder if he’ll be PM for much longer now”, a Labour source says.<\/p>\n

There’ll be an enormous number of chats about McSweeney’s exit in the next couple of days – but this really is important beyond the soap opera, for four big reasons.<\/p>\n

For one, the PM really, really relied on McSweeney’s political instincts – much, much more than Boris Johnson on Dominic Cummings, Theresa May on Gavin Barwell, or David Cameron on Edward Llewellyn. <\/p>\n

Second, McSweeney knew how to win and was central to rebuilding Labour after the party was hammered in 2019. Third, losing a vital ally shows how deep Starmer’s problems run – McSweeney was one of the PM’s last plays to hold his critics at bay.<\/p>\n

Finally, don’t underestimate the disruption of changes like this, especially when the government is already struggling. Starmer’s critics have a scalp, so what now?<\/p>\n

Even the final decision for him to quit is causing turmoil. <\/p>\n

Just before we went on air at 09:00 this morning, two sources told us that this was not the plan and nothing was changing – and senior minister Pat McFadden even said there\u2019d be “no point” getting rid of him, on air<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Even cabinet ministers have been shocked by this afternoon\u2019s decision and assumed, as McFadden suggested this morning, that it was not going to happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Starmer relied on McSweeney’s instincts – so what now?published at 15:15 GMT 15:15 GMT Laura KuenssbergPresenter, Sunday with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-414958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}