5 hours ago
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Here is something they can’t take away from him: Morgan McSweeney is often credited for Labour’s remarkable turnaround from the abyss of the 2019 election to the astounding landslide of 2024. Few thought it could be done. The Tories did all they could to help, but it took clever strategy and ruthless tactics to pull off what no pollsters predicted in the immediate wake of Boris Johnson’s 80-seat majority. But it turned out that the skills that win election campaigns are not those that run a government.
His resignation today will do little to shore up Keir Stamer’s precarious position. “Man or woman overboard!” has been the frequent cry from the decks of No 10. After just 18 months, here’s a roll call of the drowned, all from senior posts selected by Starmer with fanfare, only to make them walk the plank: Sue Gray, Steph Driver, Liz Lloyd, James Lyons, Matthew Doyle, Nin Pandit, Paul Ovenden and probably more I’ve forgotten. It’s not a good look: in a company, shareholders would ask what was wrong with their CEO.
McSweeney became the punch bag for everything that has gone wrong in the Labour party: it was ever harder to tell exactly when he was or wasn’t to blame. “I take full responsibility,” he says, for advising the disastrous Peter Mandelson appointment. As Mandelson’s protege, follower and third-way mimic, he tugged the party rightwards to chase votes for ever lost to Nigel Farage, when all the polls said go left, fetch back Green and Liberal Democrat supporters: the times had changed since his mentor’s hero days of 1997.
No, it was not McSweeney’s responsibility: it was only the leader’s, as is every decision made around his cabinet table, but Starmer never had the political brain or impulses to see where danger lay, even when warned. U-turns have become the most memorable thing about his political style.
There are three years left before the next general election and a colossal majority, for whoever can take Labour forward now it has shed the Mandelson-McSweeney drag anchors pulling it towards the right. The party and potential candidates are nowhere near ready yet for a leadership election. The barring of Andy Burnham from standing as an MP in the Gorton and Denton byelection so that he could not enter the contest will look worse as days go by. That none has dared step forward with a challenge in the last week of this crisis suggests the usual pusillanimity on the Labour benches, riven by factions, more afraid of losing to internal rivals than of doing nothing at the risk of losing the next election catastrophically.
Keir Starmer himself could signal that he is ready to begin the process of turning his ship of state in a new direction, and plenty in his cabinet are ready to push some of the missing radicalism he has been frightened away from. As he said in his excellent conference speech, there is only one overriding duty: to keep Farage out, whatever it takes.
That means a new leader, but that will never be enough without new purpose. Whoever it is, none of the intractable problems will disappear, and the bond markets will continue to dominate decisions. But much of the boldness once promised, such as electoral and Lords reform, needs no money, just a strong nerve. There’s no knowing how much McSweeney’s departure changes the political trajectory, as too much mystic power may have been attributed to him. But without him, there are no more excuses. In the end the cabinet decides – but will it dare?
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Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
