Keir Starmer tries to move on from his Morgan McSweeney era 

LONDON — In the weeks after he resigned as No. 10 chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney went for a beer with Keir Starmer.

Britain’s prime minister slipped away from his official residence to an undisclosed location for the private chat in late February or early March, according to three close to No. 10 who were granted anonymity to speak frankly.

In many ways that is unsurprising. The pair built Starmer’s center-left project together since 2019 and won the 2024 election. But it exemplifies how Starmer will find it hard to make a clean break from the top strategist — whether he likes it or not.

McSweeney, who quit No.10 on Feb. 8 after pushing Starmer to appoint his ally Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S., is back in the headlines six weeks after he left Downing Street. This time it is over the revelation that his phone was stolen last October, meaning that when potentially embarrassing messages between the disgraced former ambassador and Starmer’s team are published in a government data dump later this spring, many of McSweeney’s will be missing.

Starmer’s efforts to move to a new era are being slowed by other events too.

The PM is set to wait until after elections on May 7 before naming a permanent chief of staff or director of communications (the latter, Tim Allan, quit a day after McSweeney), eight people with knowledge of talks in No. 10 said.

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran is consuming huge bandwidth — but the more glaring reason is that Starmer’s own MPs keep threatening to move against him in May. Any candidate for the two top jobs would need “some guarantee of job security that is higher than the new supreme leader of Iran,” as one of the eight people put it.

POLITICO spoke to 20 current and former government officials, ministers and MPs to build a picture of state of play in No. 10.

While Starmer has promoted aides to do the work on an interim basis, some allies of the PM now fear that he will be left waiting for an extra injection of staff in his No. 10 operation just when he needs one the most.

Countdown to May

On May 7 Labour will face the verdict of voters across the U.K. in English councils and the Welsh and Scottish parliaments. For months Starmer’s critics have treated the votes as a decisive moment for his premiership.

Combined with war in the Gulf, work on the elections has drawn MPs’ attention from leadership plotting — and No. 10 away from a staff shake-up. “The received wisdom in No. 10 is that there will be no movement until May,” said the second of the eight people cited above. A government official added: “‘Until after May’ is all I ever hear about pretty much everything.”

While Starmer’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting and former deputy Angela Rayner are among those touted as possible replacements for Starmer, each would need 80 declared supporters to trigger a formal leadership challenge. It remains deeply unclear whether MPs will actually move to topple the PM in May; even many of Starmer’s ardent critics believe they won’t.

Even so, this uncertainty weighs heavily on any attempt to change the No. 10 team, especially when many external candidates would have a notice period before coming in.

“Who the hell is going to take on this job right now? You’ve got absolutely zero job security,” said a third of the eight people cited above. 

A fourth added: “It’s hard finding someone to take it if there’s going to be a leadership challenge in May. This is why they aren’t looking to make an appointment until after May. Not that I necessarily think there will be a challenge — but it is an obvious uncertainty that a big figure would worry about.”

The ghost of Morgan past

While all this unfolds, the shadow of McSweeney hangs in the air.

The former chief of staff remains in touch with his allies in government, many of whom have his new phone number (which has changed for the second time in a few years).

Starmer even appears to have left the door ajar to his return — eventually.

At McSweeney’s leaving drinks in a pub basement earlier this month, a few days after their private beer, four witnesses recall the PM jovially urging his former aide to rest but not go too far. The same people say McSweeney joked he would come down from his “mountain,” or wherever he may be, if there was any funny business from Starmer’s detractors.

A Labour frontbencher recalled: “It didn’t sound like a proper goodbye to me. It sounded like a ‘so long … for now.’”

McSweeney’s allies stress that he is merely keeping up social contact with his friends, and not trying to interfere in Westminster. One said he is spending time trying to rebuild his legacy; another said he is taking a “complete break from British politics.” Some wonder aloud whether he will work on a center-left project overseas.

But as another person close to No. 10 put it, some bonds are hard to break: “You’ve got a generation of advisers who look to Morgan as their spiritual guide. Despite everything that’s gone on, they do trust his judgment.”

A second government official added: “You don’t just disappear from Westminster after 10 years. He still hasn’t taken a holiday.”

The search for a permanent chief

Back in Downing Street, the work goes on. 

Starmer appointed his two deputy chiefs of staff, Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, as joint chiefs on an acting basis. In recent weeks Cuthbertson has begun maternity leave and her part of the role is being covered by No. 10 Director of Partnerships Ellie Robinson.

Starmer’s Press Secretary Sophie Nazemi, a Labour media aide for almost a decade, has also covered the duties of the director of communications job since early February.

Several Labour officials believe Alakeson could be given the chief of staff job permanently, while Cuthbertson also receives praise; one senior Labour MP said: “She gets the politics and she gets stuff done.”

However, two people with knowledge of discussions said no decision had yet been taken on whether to have one chief of staff or split the role permanently into two jobs, covering politics and operations.

Beyond the acting chiefs, the wider field of candidates for the top jobs is less clear.

Louise Casey, a long-standing government troubleshooter and ally of Starmer, has said privately that she would not want the chief of staff job, a person with knowledge of her thinking said.

The Guardian reported that Jonathan Powell, the PM’s national security adviser who held the chief of staff role under Tony Blair, also would not want the job (though No. 10 officials denied he had been offered it).

Steph Driver, who quit as Starmer’s joint director of communications in September, has said in private that she would not return to No. 10, a person with knowledge of her thinking said.

Although Tom Baldwin, the PM’s biographer, has been tipped as one potential candidate in media reports, it is not clear that he has been approached for either of the two roles.

There are internal options. MPs credit Starmer’s Political Director Amy Richards with improving fractured relationships with the Labour back benches. And one of Starmer’s longest-serving aides, his former Director of Communications Ben Nunn, is only next door — working as chief of staff to Chancellor Rachel Reeves in 11 Downing Street.

Others had mooted Darren Jones, the Cabinet minister who as Starmer’s chief secretary is charged with solving problems across government. But Jones has advised Starmer that the chief of staff should be a backroom special adviser, not an elected politician, said a ninth person with knowledge of talks in No. 10.

Some people who have worked with Starmer say he finds personnel decisions difficult and trying to guess his choice is a fool’s game. “I don’t think anyone knows for sure,” said one person who speaks regularly to No. 10. “It’s up to the PM.”

Things carry on

Meanwhile, Starmer’s allies insist that No. 10 is already evolving.

The prime minister has become more willing to pick fights with opposing parties, is more strident about his achievements and his desire to get closer to the EU, and has said he will listen more to his MPs’ concerns about a challenge from the left.

Many of Downing Street’s top roles are also now held by women, after long-running complaints from some aides about a “boys’ club” culture in government. The presentation of McSweeney as an all-knowing Svengali — both by some allies and in the media — long frustrated many aides who argued it gave one man too much credit and overlooked other members of Starmer’s team.

The operation enjoyed a high point the day after McSweeney’s resignation, when Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar called for Starmer to go. Downing Street aides set up a “war room” and within hours they persuaded the full Cabinet and Rayner to show public support — isolating Sarwar and dimming the threat of a May challenge a little.

Some Labour officials could not resist pointing out that the moment women were put in charge, the machine got something done. 

“There’s no rush to fill” the chief of staff job, argued one Labour official. “It’s ably being done in the meantime.”

Starmer also recently appointed Antonia Romeo as cabinet secretary, the most senior civil servant, and Jones is working to bring the Cabinet Office and No. 10 teams closer together. “It’s the strongest setup we’ve had since coming into government,” said one No. 10 official.

But while several Starmer allies described Alakeson as well-liked, some voiced doubts that the current set-up — with two chiefs of staff — should be made permanent.

One Labour official said they had detected an uptick in civil servants bringing decisions directly to Dan York-Smith, Starmer’s principal private secretary (PPS), rather than seeking clarity through political special advisers who would get a steer from the chief of staff. (Two other Labour officials protested at this, saying that civil servants channeling work through the PPS is how the system is meant to work.)

A second person who speaks regularly to No. 10 argued: “Things are blocked up on the political side. They are in an emergency period with the war in Iran and thinner staffing than usual, and Vidhya is doing a bit of everything.”

A third government official said this was untrue, arguing that No. 10 was in fact running more cohesively. The senior Labour MP quoted above added that McSweeney had been a “bottleneck” and political staff no longer had to second-guess what he thinks.

Raising an issue with No. 10 remains frustrating, argued the senior MP. “It’s like kicking a football into a room,” they said. “They all chase it, it ends up in a corner, they go ‘oh, that’s nice!’ and then they walk away.”

Whatever Starmer decides, there will be little room for error. 

The PM faces a packed calendar with a new king’s speech to lay out his legislative agenda on May 13. That will be followed by the G7 summit in France on June 15-17 and an summit with the EU on closer alignment, pencilled in for late June or early July.

But another source of stress is more immediate. Dozens of his aides and ministers are due to have their private messages with Mandelson published as early as mid-April — with potentially embarrassing consequences for his allies across government. Perhaps it is for the best that Starmer stays loose on his choice of top aide for now.

Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.