Morgan McSweeney’s grip on power is loosening by the moment

Reed, who is a close friend of McSweeney, naturally said they could – in an increasingly tetchy and red-faced manner as No 10 took deserved kickings from GMB’s Susannah Reid, Sky’s Sophy Ridge and Today’s Amol Rajan, among others. None of the appearances were a complete car crash – the Rajan interview was definitely a large bike crash, though – but was Reed really the best Labour could offer?

That the answer was “yes” is a moment that says much about how McSweeney’s once vice-like grip on the government is slipping away after revelations of his close role in getting Mandelson appointed ambassador.

McSweeney and Reed first worked together at Lambeth Council, where the latter was leader and the former a rising star party organiser. Later they were architects of the Labour Together think tank, first seen as a body that would heal divisions across the party after a series of punishing electoral defeats, but now regarded by some as an engine for removing leftist dissenters from the Corbyn years.

If an Angela Rayner, a David Lammy or an Yvette Cooper had come out to defend McSweeney, a little of the dissent in Labour’s ranks might have been dampened down. That only McSweeney’s closest ally could be found to defend McSweeney speaks volumes. And the noise around an already unpopular figure will continue to get louder.

McSweeney has long been seen as a likely sacrificial lamb if May’s local elections go as badly as feared. Now his sacrifice is being moved up the schedule. When Ridge asked, “Is Morgan McSweeney safe in his job?”Reed replied, “Yes, of course”. This seems optimistic at best.

The rest of what Reed said continued in a similar vein of unreality. On every platform, Reed insisted that Starmer had been misled, that he had been unaware, that he had been duped. That the PM had “not known these things” before appointing Mandelson as US ambassador almost a year ago, that “Peter Mandelson lied and the process didn’t flag up concerns beyond his lying. He made out that he barely had a relationship with Epstein.”

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Yet we know from what Starmer said in the Commons on Wednesday that this is not an accurate version of events. He may not have known that Mandelson was passing sensitive financial information directly from the heart of government to someone who seemed liable to use it for the financial gain of himself and others. But the damning thing in public eyes is Starmer’s admission to Tory leader Kemi Badenoch that he knew Mandelson and Epstein had remained in contact even after the paedophile investor’s 2008 prison term for child sex offences.

That hardly chimes with Reed telling Rajan that “what Mandelson did was he made out that his relationship with Epstein was not only over but had barely existed in the first place and he was taken at his word. There was a vetting process to be gone through that threw up nothing that added further concern to what Mandelson was saying and so the appointment was made on the basis of his experience as the former EU trade commissioner.”

When offered the chance by Rajan to defend No 10’s political operations, and McSweeney in particular, the minister did not mention the PM’s chief of staff by name.

“I think you need to look at what the government is doing,” he said. “We’re seeing waiting lists falling now at the fastest rate in 15 years, we’ve seen six interest rate cuts in a row because the economy is stabilising, we’re seeing the economy growing, the third fastest in the G7, after we flatlined for a decade. The political operation and all of us working with Number 10 as a collective government are delivering these changes.”

Students of recent political history may recall that responding to specific questions with a list of unrelated achievements was a hallmark of the dog days of Boris Johnson’s government. How much longer can Starmer have? For McSweeney, despite his friend Steve Reed’s efforts, it might be hours rather than days.