Peter Mandelson has been damned and is doomed. But while the disgraced Labour grandee’s links with Jeffrey Epstein continue to be scrutinised, Westminster gossip is now centring on No 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney – and what his future means for his boss Keir Starmer.
McSweeney, a Mandelson protégé, was reportedly the key figure in pushing for his old mentor to get the job – and was said to have fought for him to stay in post when the Epstein files connections first resurfaced last year.
McSweeney’s enemies in Labour – and at this stage, he has no shortage of those – believe that it might be enough to topple him in the coming days – even if that means Keir Starmer will have lost two chiefs in just two years, which starts to look like carelessness.
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Starmer says he retains “full confidence” in McSweeney, though backbenchers wonder whether that confidence is fully sincere about that. The fact is that as long as McSweeney remains in post, he is a convenient firewall against what will come if, as expected, Labour’s results in May’s elections are a total wipeout.
Starmer’s plan to hold on is likely to rely on promising a change of focus and a change of team, and this will require a sacrificial lamb – a role many believe McSweeney is being fitted up for.
The problem for Starmer, of course, is that if McSweeney is forced out now over the Mandelson affair, he can’t be forced out again later, in May. All of which adds up to an unenviable position for the man who was once portrayed as Labour’s Svengali. Would he rather eye up a new role now, or wait a few months?
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