Morgan McSweeney, the PM’s chief of staff, is being blamed by many Labour MPs for No 10 now being in the situation where, with less than a week to go before the vote on the welfare bill, the government does not yet have the votes to get it through.
In a long read on McSweeney’s role in the crisis, written by Jim Pickard, George Parker and Anna Gross, the Financial Times quotes a “Labour veteran” saying:
Everyone is selling shares in Morgan. People are starting to put their heads above the parapet and say maybe he’s not the Messiah after all.
The article says McSweeney is accused of ignoring the views of the parliamentary party and being too obsessed with fighting Labour’s left. It says:
Another MP said McSweeney’s role in the government seemed to be to “shield” Starmer from uncomfortable truths, including on his welfare reforms.
“Other people in Number 10 were saying he didn’t have the numbers for this and he wouldn’t get it through parliament. The chief whip has been warning them about this for months. But they had their fingers in their ears,” they said. “It’s extraordinarily arrogant and complacent.”
Others see in Number 10’s determinedness to press ahead with next week’s House of Commons vote on the welfare bill a sign of McSweeney’s desire to still confront Labour’s denuded leftwing. One MP from the 2024 election intake said it seemed as though McSweeney was “spoiling for a fight” with the left of the party over the welfare reforms, which was a “very stupid thing to do”.
The Times’ splash story also quotes unnamed MPs criticising McSweeney. It says:
Other MPs in last year’s intake conceded many of the rebels were united by their dislike of senior advisers in No 10. “What links everyone on that list is that they reject Morgan’s way of doing politics,” one said.
Ministers blamed McSweeney and [Rachel] Reeves for “shambolic” political management. “Rachel’s responsible for imposing an arbitrary cuts agenda on Liz’s welfare reform agenda,” one said. “Morgan is responsible for shambolic political management. He was warned that this would happen and ignored it. He has completely failed to do his job.”
Asked about the criticism of McSweeney from unnamed Labour figures quoted in the press, Douglas Alexander, the trade minister, told broadcasters this morning that he was not interested in SW1 “gossip”. He said it was for the prime minister to choose his team in No 10. But he also said that McSweeney was part of a team that delivered Labour “an historic victory only last July, against expectations”.
