So Farewell Then Morgan McSweeney

In the end, not even the architect of supposedly making Labour electable again - by the masterstroke of scoring 560,000 fewer votes in 2024 than when the party, so the media establishment narrative goes, was totally unelectable back in 2019 - could save his own skin, not after the revelations concerning Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein.

So it was that Morgan McSweeney fell on his sword, to the great relief of all those who wished he had never wielded it at all, and the thinly disguised pleasure of all those Labour activists who had to take the abuse on the doorstep during the 2019 campaign, knowing now that McSweeney and his cabal were at that same time working to throw the election.

It was to the yet further relief of all those Labour members who took Keir Starmer at his word when he made his pitch for the Labour leadership, who were lied to in order to get them to back McSweeney’s chosen candidate, the reasoning of The Great Mastermind being that they, like all those voters, would have to return to Labour as they had no other political home.

But, sad to say for the Labour Together clique, the deeply unpleasant McSweeney departing the stage is not going to be the end of it. Not only that, the rest of that clique, especially its most visible representatives, know it, but being of less than perfect courage, are lying low right now, while their hero and his “allies” brief our free and fearless press in a rewriting of reality.

Especially mirth-inducing has been Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham claiming “Allies of Morgan McSweeney say he was not responsible for Peter Mandelson’s appointment, contrary to the narrative pushed by Labour’s soft-left”. Narrative, well-sourced, pushed by the real world, more like. Starmer took the decision to appoint Mandelson, but McSweeney was the cheerleader.

It got worse, with “a colleague” adding “an incalculable loss to the government that has devastated those who know how much he has done for Labour. How fitting that his final act in government is to take full responsibility for others’ mistakes, as he has done for years”. Like he took responsibility for Sue Gray. And Angela Rayner? Nah, someone else briefed against her.

Worse, and oh so tellingly, McSweeney’s resignation statement tells that he is stepping down from The Government. But as Downing Street chief of staff, he was merely a political appointee, a salaried staffer, unelected by any constituency of actual voters. OH WHAT A GIVEAWAY! And thus the assertion that Starmer was not really running the show was confirmed.

What happens next? Steve Howell is another focusing on Labour Together: “McSweeney has resigned, but his collaborators are still there. Labour has no chance of a political recovery unless it completely clears out the discredited Labour Together faction, including [Steve] Reed, [Pat] McFadden, [Wes] Streeting, [John] Healey, [Shabana] Mahmood and Starmer himself”.

Any advance on those names? Martin O’Neill has another: “Now that Morgan McSweeney has 'resigned' as chief of staff, if the Labour Party has any hope of restoring any of its reputation, others figures who were close to Mandelson and did his dirty work also need to be removed. Josh Simons also has to go”. Simons, it seems, commissioned the surveillance of critical journalists.

Pamela Fitzpatrick has another very interesting name to add. “In June 2023 I was trying to make a complaint to Lords Standards about Mandelson’s close association with known peadophile Epstein. Meanwhile Luke Akehurst MP was inviting Mandelson to be guest speaker at a Labour First Dinner”. Careful there, you don’t want to be accused of anti-Semitism!

So will McSweeney’s departure be the end of it? Almost certainly not: if Labour does not just lose the Gorton and Denton by-election, but comes third in a formerly safe seat, and has a seriously bad round of local election results in May, Starmer will be out, if he hasn’t walked already. And no amount of spin, on the subject of how much more electable he is, will save him.

McSweeney is out. Starmer will soon follow him. Just rejoice at that news.

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