'The Most Powerful Individual in Britain' – Peter Oborne on Morgan McSweeney

Peter Oborne’s exclusive Byline Times reporting exposes how Keir Starmer's chief strategist is driving a Labour Government towards defeat by the far-right

Head of Political Strategy 10 Downing Street, Morgan McSweeney arrives at his office. Photo: Tayfun Salci/ZUMA Press Wire

Downing Street Chief-of-Staff Morgan McSweeney has become – in Peter Oborne’s words – “the most powerful individual in Britain.” From factional purges inside Labour to the defenestration of Sue Gray, from appeasing Nigel Farage to governing by permanent campaign, McSweeney now shapes the direction of Starmer’s government. Perhaps more than the Prime Minister himself.

In a series of exclusive reports for Byline Times, Oborne traces how a backroom strategist seized the levers of power – and what that means for Britain’s democracy and the global rise of the far-right.

Subscribe to Byline Times to read Oborne’s monthly Diary, packed with political insights, Westminster intrigue and uncompromising analysis you won’t find in the mainstream press.

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The Sweeney Strategy

August 2024, p.11

There is a serious problem. And, if recent history is anything to go by, it may end up inflicting grave damage on the Starmer premiership. Starmer is much too dependent on his campaign strategist, Morgan McSweeney, who is now the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications.

There is nothing unusual about this. Almost every PM since Tony Blair has employed their version of McSweeney. Alastair Campbell destroyed Blair’s reputation for integrity. David Cameron hired Murdoch henchman Andy Coulson with shameful consequences. Nick Timothy all but lost Theresa May the 2017 election. And Boris Johnson disastrously relied on Dominic Cummings. Of the above, McSweeney most closely resembles Cummings – who drove out the Tory left, stripping the whip from Ken Clarke, Rory Stewart, Dominic Grieve, and others.

In the short-term, Cummings’ project to split the Conservative Party helped Johnson secure his massive election victory in 2019. But in the medium-term, it gave far too much power to the far-right of the party – Patel, Braverman, Jenrick, etc – and removed the Tory soul.

McSweeney has been waging a Cummings-type war against the Labour left. This explains the cynical recruitment of populist Tory Natalie Elphicke; the deranged bid to prevent Diane Abbott from standing as a Labour MP; and the vindictive decision to ban pro-Palestine advocate Faiza Shaheen from running in Chingford and Woodford Green, which handed the seat back to former Tory Leader Iain Duncan Smith. Yet more shocking was the withdrawal of support for Labour’s candidate in Clacton, paving the way for a smooth victory for Nigel Farage and the synchronised dog-whistle attacks against Britain’s vulnerable Bangladeshi community.

McSweeney’s core job is electoral strategy, and I suppose I can see the rationale in mopping up as many voters as possible regardless of how racist or bigoted they are. But Harold Wilson was onto something important when he said the Labour Party was a “moral crusade or it is nothing”.

Wilson, like his great predecessor Clem Attlee, understood Labour is a broad church uniting left and right. There is, moreover, a great deal to be said for doing the right thing and not just the strategic thing. Indeed, Starmer’s promise to put ‘country before party’ involves doing exactly that.

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