Allan’s LinkedIn profile details how he worked for BSkyB before he founded the Portland Communications agency, which specialises in reputation management for businesses, public bodies and high profile individuals.<\/p>\n
He was also involved in charitable and investment activities before his return to government.<\/p>\n
Allan was the fourth person to hold the role of director of communications under Sir Keir.<\/p>\n
Matthew Doyle resigned as Sir Keir’s communications chief nine months after Labour won the 2024 general election, emailing colleagues that it was “time to pass the baton on”.<\/p>\n
He was replaced by Steph Driver and James Lyons, both of whom have since left No 10.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, McSweeney resigned as Sir Keir’s chief of staff over calls for someone to be held accountable for the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the United States.<\/p>\n
McSweeney had succeeded Sue Gray, who left the role in October 2024 just months after Labour won the general election.<\/p>\n
Baroness Gray, who investigated Covid-era rule-breaking in Boris Johnson’s government when working as a senior civil servant, left Sir Keir’s team following reports of a power struggle between her and other aides.<\/p>\n
Paul Ovenden also resigned as No 10’s director of political strategy in September 2025 after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Allan’s LinkedIn profile details how he worked for BSkyB before he founded the Portland Communications agency, which specialises…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-416567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416567","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=416567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}