Former PM aide admits Labour was not ready for power

Labour did not do enough to get ready for government ahead of the 2024 general election, according to Sir Keir Starmer’s former senior aide.

Morgan McSweeney, who served as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff in Downing Street until February this year, conceded that the party “hadn’t done enough to prepare for Government”.

Speaking in a BBC interview, he also said Labour should have adopted a “way more optimistic” tone during its difficult opening months in office.

That early period was marked by repeated warnings from Rachel Reeves, who, after becoming Chancellor, stressed the scale of the economic problems Labour said it had inherited from the previous Conservative administration.

As Ms Reeves moved to address what the Government described as a £22billion “black hole” in the public finances, she scrapped winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners — a policy that she and Sir Keir later partially reversed.

Mr McSweeney admitted the controversial decision had come to “define the Government in a way that did us a lot of damage”.

He also said the row over “freebies”, including Sir Keir’s acceptance of clothes and spectacles from Labour donor Lord Alli, had further damaged the Government during its first months in power.

Mr McSweeney, who left his No10 post following the Peter Mandelson scandal, also revealed he was too upset to watch Sir Keir’s tearful resignation speech in Downing Street last week in full.

Sir Keir is almost certain to be replaced by Andy Burnham as Labour leader and PM on 20 July, in the absence of any other Labour leadership contenders.

But Mr McSweeney’s admission that Sir Keir was under-prepared to enter Government will raise concerns about Mr Burnham’s ability to hit the ground running.

The former Greater Manchester mayor has only just returned to Westminster after winning the Makerfield by-election on 18 June.

He has since been coy about his plans for Government and exited a speech he gave in Manchester on Monday without taking questions from the media, leaving the country little clearer about details of his policy platform.

Speaking to the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast, Mr McSweeney reflected on his own experiences ahead of entering Downing Street as one of Sir Keir’s most senior advisers in July 2024. 

He said: ‘Early in 2024, when we were preparing for the general election, when I was sitting down with (now Work and Pensions Secretary) Pat McFadden in windowless rooms, hour after hour, planning for day one – I did start to realise that we hadn’t done enough to prepare for Government. And then we got exposed for that early.’  

Following the turmoil of Labour’s first two years in office, Mr McSweeney added: ‘We didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to be in.

‘We are now in a very different era than when Labour was last in government, and I think we didn’t have enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it, what that meant for the state, how the state needed to be reformed, because in lots of ways the state is really out of shape and is unable to deliver for people.’

People across the country are ‘frustrated’ and have seen politicians break promises time and again, Mr McSweeney suggested, adding: ‘You have to deliver quite quickly for people for them to see the change quickly, and I think we didn’t come in with enough of a theory about how we would do that, and why that was important.’

Although former top civil servant Sue Gray was appointed by Sir Keir to lead Labour’s preparations for Government – before briefly being the PM’s chief of staff in No10 – Mr McSweeney did not wholly blame his predecessor for Labour’s early troubles in office.

He said it was ‘not about one individual’, adding: ‘When I say we weren’t prepared, I really do mean the Labour Party more generally’.

‘I take my own responsibilities for that, rather than blaming one person,’ he continued.

Mr McSweeney resigned as Sir Keir’s chief of staff in February this year after he pushed for Lord Mandelson’s appointment as Britain’s ambassador to the US.

With Sir Keir now having announced his own departure from No10, Mr McSweeney said he was ‘optimistic’ about Mr Burnham becoming the next PM.

He also backed the former Greater Manchester mayor’s bid to create a Downing Street team in Manchester, known as ‘No10 North’.

‘If at the top of Government there are people who don’t just have a desk somewhere outside London but actually live their whole lives outside of London, I think that will be a good thing,’ Mr McSweeney said.

‘A lot of people won’t like it. I think it’s a good idea. I think he should just push it through, the logistics can be sorted out.’

Of his former boss’s demise, Mr McSweeney said of Sir Keir’s resignation: ‘I’m still processing it all, to be honest with you.

‘I haven’t worked it all through. It’s very sad. I couldn’t watch all of his press conference because I found it quite sad.’

He added: ‘For me, some of the main lessons are preparation is far more important to strategy when it comes to just about any aspect of politics.

‘I think politics moves a lot faster these days. It moves faster than the institutions that govern it are ready for. And I think you don’t have enough time to get it right. You have to start delivering for people very quickly.

‘You run out of political capital soon. And so it’s disappointing, it’s a disappointing end, but I wouldn’t have swapped it for the world.’