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Who killed Sue Gray? The power struggle in No. 10 has a victor

Sue Gray brought extraordinary disharmony. (Credit: Charles McQuillan/Getty)

Sue Gray brought extraordinary disharmony. (Credit: Charles McQuillan/Getty)


October 7, 2024   8 mins

And so, the power struggle is over: Sue Gray has lost and Morgan McSweeney has won. Keir Starmer did what he had to — but now there can be no more excuses.

The Prime Minister’s decision to replace Gray so soon into his — and her— time in government is part of a ruthless reordering of his inner circle intended to create a tighter and fundamentally more political team than the one that has overseen the calamity of his first 100 days in charge.

Gray has some reasons to feel hard-done by. She is not the first chief of staff to find the job impossible, accused of hoarding power and blocking access. But the level of animosity towards her from within Downing Street is unique at this stage in a new government. She has fallen out with aides, become the centre of a political storm and failed to protect the Prime Minister from the fall out. “It has been the worst start to any government in recent history with the exception of Liz Truss,” as one senior Labour figure put it to me with exasperation.

Most important of all, however, is the fact that she went for McSweeney and missed — and now he has her job. Instead of ensuring McSweeney was at the centre of everything, as he was in opposition, Gray attempted to sideline his entire political operation in favour of a more technocratic administration that she was in charge of. In doing so, however, she lost control of No.10 and the Government appeared devoid of any purpose or direction. It was a disaster.

As a result, Gray finds herself dramatically demoted to “the Prime Minister’s envoy for the regions and nations”. McSweeney, meanwhile, has been promoted, with two new deputy chiefs of staff reporting to him — the former political director, Vidhya Alakeson, and director of government relations, Jill Cuthbertson. In another significant move, the former Daily Mirror and Sunday Times journalist, James Lyons, will join to lead a new “strategic communications team”, in what is effectively a demotion for the current director of communications, Matthew Doyle. This is now McSweeney’s No.10.

But this can only be the start of the internal revolution. Starmer must follow it up with a cascade of other appointments, starting with a new cabinet secretary alongside McSweeney, as well as a new principal private secretary, national security adviser and ambassador to Washington. But for this to work, they all need to know what he wants — and this is where McSweeney comes in.

While Starmer claimed yesterday’s changes were made to “strengthen his Downing Street operation ahead of marking his first 100 days in office”, they are an implicit admission that a reset was needed. There cannot be two rival centres of power within Downing Street, working in separate parts of the building, with separate instincts and ideas. Starmer finally realised this.

It may seem trite but the fact that Gray and McSweeney were not even working in the same room is important. Since moving into No.10, Starmer has taken the same office used by most recent prime ministers, a relatively small office at the back of the building accessible through a larger room where all the Prime Minister’s most important officials tend to sit. This in turn is on a corridor which connects Downing Street to the Cabinet Office via something called “the link door”. The reason most prime ministers have worked here is because they can have all their most trusted aides at hand and the cabinet secretary is just a short walk away. But until now, McSweeney sat somewhere else entirely.

“McSweeney offers a hard-headed, unromantic clarity about Labour’s purpose.”

Unlike Gray, who did sit directly outside Starmer’s office, McSweeney and his team worked out of a room at the front of No. 10 near to the front door. To reach McSweeney — Starmer’s longest serving and most important aide — the PM had to walk out of his office, past Gray and her team, down the main corridor of the building and into McSweeney’s office. Such small details matter. As anyone who has ever worked in No.10 understands: proximity is power.

Those inside Starmer’s No.10 liked to argue that proximity mattered less under him because of how he worked. Every week, time was set aside for him and McSweeney to see each other. And besides, Starmer had developed a habit of taking his work upstairs into the Thatcher room, where he would read through Government papers on the sofa. Starmer, then, was a roving Prime Minister who liked to use more of the building than his predecessors, which meant it wasn’t quite so easy to ensure proximity. This was the argument until yesterday; and it was bogus.

It was always clear that the physical incoherence of this operation reflected its wider strategic incoherence. The Starmer government has yet to find its animating purpose; its all-encompassing mission to which all other priorities must, in the end, be subordinated. It has missions — plural — and they are all perfectly reasonable, but they don’t have one organising principle.

The best way to understand the extraordinary disharmony within Starmer’s government, then, is to know that it wasn’t a battle for personalities, but a proxy war for control of the Starmer project; a battle to define what it was that they were elected to do. That job now falls to McSweeney.

To some of his critics, he is a ruthless Machiavelli who conned the Labour Party into electing a leader far to the Right of the one they thought they were getting. To others, he is a genius puppeteer who guided his uncharismatic frontman to a landslide election victory by pulling all the right strings. The fact that he has clearly won his Cold War with Gray will add further colour to the McSweeney myth. It is certainly true that without ever having a cross word with her, he has ensured that he has emerged on top and not her. To achieve this, he bided his time and consulted those he could trust to understand how he could ensure his influence was felt. In the end, though, it is his personal relationship with Starmer which has ensured he triumphed. He has the Prime Minister’s trust..

The truth is McSweeney is not Thomas Cromwell reincarnate. He has obvious weaknesses, especially for someone who must now manage the Whitehall machine. He remains new to national political power and naive to some of Whitehall’s eccentricities (though, evidently, not that naive). Some of his biggest supporters also worry that his quiet, unassuming nature and lack of “natural authority” — read public school bravado — puts him at a disadvantage in a system which still expects such traits. He will need to learn quickly how to impose his authority.

What McSweeney really offers is a hard-headed, unromantic clarity about Labour’s purpose that is more reminiscent of the party’s tougher social democratic past than its softer liberal present. He — more than Starmer — is someone who would be instantly recognisable to any figure from the old Labour Right, from Ernest Bevin to John Reid but is a rarer sight in Westminster of late. He did not learn his politics at Oxford and the bar, but on council estates working for local government. This experience has given him an instinctive loathing for the kind of badge-wearing politics of virtue the Labour Right has long associated with the middle-class Left.

McSweeney sees the purpose of Labour in straightforward, class terms: to represent in government the interests of ordinary people who are not otherwise looked after by their employers, landlords — or, indeed, politicians. He holds those officials who failed to protect the working-class girls of Rochdale in particular contempt. Unlike many in the party, this idea of purpose also combines with an instinctive sympathy for the attitudes and instincts of their voters and those McSweeney believes should be Labour voters.

The upshot of all this is a naturally blue Labour instinct that borrows the language and feelings of conservatism to pursue an older class-based politics. Rather than being some kind of re-run of Blairism, this is a politics more deeply rooted in Labour’s past. In the run up to the 1979 election, before the Winter of Discontent blew James Callaghan off course, that grand figure of the Tory Right, Maurice Cowling, complained that Margaret Thatcher was losing the political battle against the Labour prime minister because he appeared and sounded in every respect a more reassuring conservative presence than her. The challenge for McSweeney is to convince the Labour Party to follow his lead when it does not feel his politics in the way that he does.

There are two areas in particular where McSweeney and his team’s instinctively conservative understanding of Britain has shone through and will define much of this Government’s record: welfare and immigration. The Labour Party is united in its opposition to the two-child benefit cap based on the straightforwardly moral argument that it increases child poverty. But McSweeney’s team also know that this is the one area where the Labour Party is most at odds with the country overall: there is overwhelming support among every cohort and group based on the entirely different moral principle that you shouldn’t have children if you can’t afford them. It is an important early marker of this government that, when forced to choose, it has decided not to argue with the public.

On the second issue, immigration, there is a clear understanding within the group close to McSweeney in government that only by making the argument for reducing the numbers and being seen to have achieved a significant reduction can they hope to be reelected. That Starmer chose to adopt the language of “love of home”, rather than “hatred of neighbour”, when defending his commitment to reducing migration in his party conference speech is another important signal of the possible future direction of this government should it, over time, start to become more “McSweenyite” in flavour.

Until now, however, the reality is that this government has lacked any real coherent narrative about its purpose, intent, mandate or strategy. It has not been blue Labour in the way Blair’s government remained distinctly new in its opening few years. Fast-tracking assisted dying, freeing prisoners early from their sentences and closing down blast furnaces as part of a green revolution are not the instincts of conservative social democracy — it’s soft Left Fabianism.

Instead, the country has been treated to a mush of different policies and declarations. One day Rachel Reeves declares the Government’s central purpose to balance the books, as if she were George Osborne, while at the same time handing out pay rises across the public sector. But nobody thinks the purpose of the Labour Party is to control public spending. This may be something that has to be done, but only as part of a longer term aspiration to achieve something else.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher’s central purpose was to save the British economy. This was part of a wider struggle for free markets and liberty — against socialism at home and communism abroad. In 1997, Blair’s central purpose was to save public services by increasing investment and opening them up to the kind of choice he believed would permanently lock in the middle classes. Like Thatcher, this domestic purpose was also tied into a wider “third way” internationalism, in which Britain would lead Europe into its future.

A cynic might point out — reasonably — that neither government was particularly successful in its missions. Thatcher’s economic record is one of solid, if not spectacular, economic growth bookended by two deep recessions. Blair, meanwhile, saw a marked improvement in public services, but one that was ultimately dependent on an economy that, it turned out, was fundamentally broken. Internationally, meanwhile, Thatcher left office as one of the victors of Cold War, but also one who had become an “ineffective brake” trying to stop German unification and the European single currency which flowed from that. Blair, in contrast, left office with two of his wars still raging, the British army effectively beaten in both Basra and Helmand.

Politics, though, is hard and ultimately ends in failure. The point about the premierships of Blair and Thatcher — and, to a certain extent, David Cameron’s — was that they were successful in taking control of the political narrative, offering a diagnosis of what was wrong with the country and showing how they would put it right. In each case, there was a clarity of purpose. Today, there is no such thing, but there needs to be. By sacking Sue Gray Starmer has made the necessary first step. Now he needs to let McSweeney take control. And this time it has to work.


Tom McTague is UnHerd’s Political Editor. He is the author of Betting The House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election.

TomMcTague

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0 01
0 01
2 months ago

She had it coming, That’s pretty arrogant demanding a higher salary than the Prime Minister. That was not going to fly in the long run, there are no heroes here anyways.

John Howes
John Howes
2 months ago
Reply to  0 01

My knowledge of Greek is limited, but I believe that after Hubris comes Nemesis.

andy young
andy young
2 months ago
Reply to  John Howes

I think Ate is in there as well. Those Greeks knew a thing or two.

Alphonse Pfarti
Alphonse Pfarti
2 months ago

If ‘failure’ means still earning £170k of public money and a sideways shift to a non-job where you have cluck all to do, then where do I sign up?

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
2 months ago

So the captain has changed some of the crew but we still have no idea where he’s heading the ship. More importantly it seems neither does he, but he likes wearing the captain’s hat.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 months ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

“See that iceberg over there? That’s our destination. We’re going to land on that iceberg, because we like penguins”.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
2 months ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

But we’re North of the Arctic Circle! 🙂

Phil Day
Phil Day
2 months ago

Before reading this article l knew little about McSweeney’s political leanings – from what is said above l’m quite looking forward to seeing what influence he has. Bit of a surprise as l’ve never supported Labour although l do like quite a lot of of what I hear from the ‘blue labour’ wing.
I’m also delighted Shady Gray has decided to step back and spend more time with her coven in the future.

Al N
Al N
2 months ago
Reply to  Phil Day

I assume this is a bot or spoof post…

Phil Day
Phil Day
2 months ago
Reply to  Al N

Why?

Liam F
Liam F
2 months ago
Reply to  Phil Day

yeah, I agree. time will tell.
..when you think about it, the attributes you’d need be an effective politican are many and onerous. Not a job I’d care to do. Even if you’re any good you’ll get loads of folks like us slagging them off. We get the politicians we deserve.

Pedro Livreiro
Pedro Livreiro
2 months ago

“…one that was ultimately dependent on an economy that, it turned out, was fundamentally broken.” And it has not been repaired – we have seen our national assets increasingly bought up by American capitalists. Did the Great Liar proclaim in his last Commons speech as Prime Minister, “Stay close to the Americans!” and do we have a choice? Since they do not care about British potholes or NHS, I want to see a politician who sets about re-establishing the British economy in Britain, not in San Francisco or Chicago. That is Starmer´s task, and I hope McSweeney is up to it.

Dylan B
Dylan B
2 months ago

Everything I read about McSweeny I like the sound of. If what is said of him is true then maybe he can steer this rudderless mess of a government to somewhere that will benefit the country.

And then I look across at David Lammy and Angela Rayner and realise, probably not!

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago
Reply to  Dylan B

Probably not

William Cameron
William Cameron
2 months ago
Reply to  Dylan B

Well he just presided over an election where he polled lower than corbyn. So he aint that smart. Any decent opposition would have trounced Labour.

Nell Clover
Nell Clover
2 months ago
Reply to  Dylan B

Never believe anything written about a man in charge of communications, strategy and campaigns. His job is to apply lipstick to a pig and convince you it’s a woman. He’s never going to under sell himself, and he knows how to make sure others don’t either.

Everything you read about Morgan McSweeney is just copy from lazy journalists repeating Morgan McSweeney’s sales pitch. See also similar men Dominic Cummings and Alastair Campbell who also sold themselves as no-nonsense organisers who get things done but were actually dissembling amateurs carried along by their own hubris until it all fell apart.

George Venning
George Venning
2 months ago
Reply to  Nell Clover

Campbell was actually an operator.
McSweeney and Cummings, not so much.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
2 months ago
Reply to  Dylan B

Those Cork boys are smart.

Miriam Cotton
Miriam Cotton
2 months ago
Reply to  Michael Clarke

“There was never a fool come out of Macroom”. Macrumpians also reputed to be the meanest people in Ireland. Make of that what you will.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
2 months ago
Reply to  Dylan B

You forgot Ed Miliband, so there’s no chance.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago

Corbynistas will hate it but alot of sensible centre left will be quietly delighted McSweeney more centre stage. Suspect the Right won’t be that chuffed though

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

The big test will be the budget. Do they have the cojones to challenge the corporate and bureaucratic vested interests and create an economy where the grafters can flourish and begin creating real wealth again? Or will they follow their New Labour predecessors and base their policy on mass immigration and artificially inflated house prices?

I suspect the latter – Starmer is a timid conformist by nature – but we’ll see.

John Howes
John Howes
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Public sector pensions liability is estimated at £1.3 trillion. Given the need to keep the wolves from the door suggests it is untouchable.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  John Howes

We’re basically scr**ed, aren’t we?

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
2 months ago
Reply to  John Howes

Actually it is worse than that. The UK’s GDP is about £2.27Tn, the current unfunded future public sector pension obligations already committed to are £2.6Tn, so already greater than a years GDP.

However, this unfunded liability also grows at a rate of £150Bn a year and rising. By 2058 if the schemes are not closed then the annual unfunded amount will have risen to £220Bn a year.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago

We had the same problem in Australia. We closed the “unfunded” schemes, and put everyone in funded schemes.

j watson
j watson
2 months ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

They’ll be a judgment that tries to rebalance the way our tax systems function (there are lots of distortions), the need for c£20b to plug the hole, and the need to not set off an unhelpful market reaction. Whatever side one might be on that’s a heck of a navigation challenge. On one hand one hopes for a radical response but on the other the Mad Liz example will occupy alot of minds. I suspect it’ll be bit a more ‘steady as she goes’ than many may hope.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  j watson

They’ll (sic) be a judgment that tries to rebalance the way our tax systems function
When Gordon Brown took office Tolley’s tax guide was two volumes. By the time he’d finished it was eleven. Given that he’s supposed to be advising the useless Reeves I don’t hold out much hope for that.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
2 months ago

I think McSweeney’s distinctive feature is that he has common sense. Which, these days, seems rare.
“He holds those officials who failed to protect the working-class girls of Rochdale in particular contempt.”
My God, why wouldn’t you?

m pathy
m pathy
2 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Starmer is one of those who failed the Rochdale girls; what is McSweeney doing working for him?

Dorian Grier
Dorian Grier
2 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Wasn’t 2TK the DPP in charge of Rochdale?

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  Dorian Grier

No – he was having lunch when the subject came up and no-one told him. Same with Savile, Fayed …

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
2 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Yet spent his council years battling the BNP, , according to the DM. Who were more likely to protect the girls that McSweeney’s Labour, as it turned out.

Edward McPhee
Edward McPhee
2 months ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Well the local Labour Party has done little to purge them so perhaps something might happen now.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
2 months ago

“…What McSweeney really offers is a hard-headed, unromantic clarity about Labour’s purpose that is more reminiscent of the party’s tougher social democratic past than its softer liberal present…”

There you go again, with all the myth-making, of which there is a lot in this article. Even if true which I doubt, not because we the public know McSweeney from Adam, but because the entirety of Labour is now cheese to the chalk of it’s past, and simply does not attract the types of people who created it’s older values, the only remnants of that past being odd figures like Corbyn, and McDonnell, and Abbott and a few others, who used to be regarded in days past with a combination of faint amusement and derision as varieties of pond life.

The proof is that absolutely nothing of what McSweeney allegedly wants has filtered through to the way either Starmer or Reeves have projected themselves so far, quite the opposite as Starmer’s responses to the riots showed – and it can’t, because they are who they are, high functionaries of the technocratic order who do not so much think of the UK as *their* country, but as a place they have been designated by happenchance to govern, and nothing is going to change that. If you want further proof of what I’m saying, just wait till Reeves’s budget, which will be a Pilate-like act of washing hands in public – essentially a distanced, cold projection of governance which screams, “I’m going clean this place up and get some order going even if it hurts like hell, you bunch of uneconomic illiterate savages”, the ‘progressive’ element being that it will help, um, progress her standing with the technocratic Imperium.

Dustin Needle
Dustin Needle
2 months ago

Good to see Alastair Campbell back on our screens this morning. It’s been a while…

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  Dustin Needle

Yes – we need regularly to be reminded just how toxic the man is.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
2 months ago
Reply to  Dustin Needle

I suspect the sarcasm was missed here.

Dustin Needle
Dustin Needle
2 months ago
Reply to  Andrew Dalton

Almost like the Blair Institute withdrew their media air cover until Gray was despatched. Maybe the next election can be replaced by an Apprentice style TV show where prospective leaders have to demonstrate how they would implement TBI manifesto. It feels like that’s where we’ve been since 2016.

John Howes
John Howes
2 months ago

Being adept at politics and activism is no training basis for governing, the rest of Team Starmer are as dysfunctional as he is.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
2 months ago

I get the impression Starmer is still, in his mind’s eye, a lawyer. And always will be. A barrister, to boot, a top silk. This means he’s nit-pickingly cautious to the point of stasis, status-obsessed, supremely arrogant and unable to accept he is ever wrong. Simply cunningly outmanoeuvred until next time. He’s also in his early 60’s, not a time in a man’s life noted for Damascene conversions.
the idea this McSweeney bloke can magically exorcise the ghost in the Starmer machine is for the birds. Starmer the human rights lawyer will always trump McS the Blue Labour (ha!) immigration realist. Starmer really is a milquetoast north London, Fabian-esque melt. I suspect he’s dimly aware McS has a point on immigration, but Keir (bless him) is more interested in stated cases, bleeding hearts and what the international judiciary will think of him in posterity.
So good luck, Morgs. You chose your man, now you’re lumbered with him.

Peter B
Peter B
2 months ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

[re “top silk”] Starmer’s not “top” at anything. He may have had the top job as DPP, but you’ll never convince me that he’s top on merit in any field of activity. Not even close.
I’m not totally convinced that McSweeney is at the mercy of Starmer. It may well be the other way round. As you noted, Starmer’s weak. I actually doubt that he’s ever fired anyone and didn’t willingly pull the trigger on Sue Gray (clue: she wasn’t really fired – just moved sideways to a made up job). Couldn’t get rid of Rayner (tried and failed at least twice). Couldn’t stand up to Corbyn.

Ben Jones
Ben Jones
2 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

In the notoriously catty world of the bar, he is apparently remembered as a half-decent silk.

Will Liley
Will Liley
2 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

Peter, a bit harsh. Starmer showed commendable skill and ruthlessness in rooting out Corbyn (& to the extent possible( sidelining Corbynism. Remember, he had to move carefully because Corbyn had installed a cult. They are still out there, and will do him down in a minute. Tom is right in that Labour needs to practise “blue” Labour policies but it won’t be easy, with the right wing press baying against his every move on one side and the Corbynist Left plotting on the other.

Jeff Dudgeon
Jeff Dudgeon
2 months ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

Starmer is first and foremost a human rights specialist hinged in his thinking to ‘international best practice’ i.e. doing what the UN or the ECHR demand (as with the Chagos islands).
He isn’t much interested in anything else which will be the seeds of his downfall. Unless another Irish person, who has presumably become British, takes over his head and brain.
McSweeney who rather easily saw off Sue Gray – had she become imperious? – is likened to the great Ernest Bevin. In truth, his clearing out of the Corbynite ultra-left and returning to standard Labour was a remarkably easy and, indeed, a traditional task. In the 1940s it was the Communist Party infiltrators that had to be removed, later the various forms of Trotskyite entryists like Militant. The absurd election of Jezza was an aberration ended without difficulty especially as the majority of Labour MPs were not far left any more than the majority of Conservative MPs were rightists who really wanted Boris.
Interesting that Morgan McSweeney’s wife Imogen (a Lambeth councillor and charity worker) became a Scottish MP, much like Sue Gray’s son got the Penge seat while being chair of the Labour Party’s Irish Society. Another trait of Irish politics?

Liam F
Liam F
2 months ago
Reply to  Jeff Dudgeon

“Interesting that Morgan McSweeney’s wife Imogen became a Scottish MP,”
-Maybe they just liked her because she was an actress on Taggart.

Miriam Cotton
Miriam Cotton
2 months ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

Well put. Starmer’s more cunning than you allow. Part of it is that he sees McSweeney’s ability and has used it well. Suspect Blair and Campbell are behind the curtain if Blair’s statements after the election are anything to go by. They all get found out in the end. The exercise of power is always ultimately defined by the bearers’ fatal flaws.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Ben Jones

The idea this McSweeney bloke can magically exorcise the ghost in the Starmer machine is for the birds“. He magically exorcised the Left, so he is half a chance.

Tim Clarke
Tim Clarke
2 months ago

No. Truss started reasonably well and performed with dignity at the Queen’s funeral for instance. Starmer has been a shambles from the beginning. The appointment of terminally stupid Lamy as Foreign Secretary was the first mis-step.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
2 months ago
Reply to  Tim Clarke

Being ambushed by the Bank of England, with the LDIs, didn’t help her at all.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Tim Clarke

Yeah. If it wasn’t for that unfortunate “singlehandedly tanking the economy” thing, Truss would still be PM.

Tim Clarke
Tim Clarke
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Wrecking the economy? You are joking of course. After 5 years of the Starmfuher and Rachel (please send me a copy of accounting for Dummies) Reeves, we will see what wrecking the economy really looks like.

Robert Routledge
Robert Routledge
2 months ago
Reply to  Tim Clarke

Starmer is a lying shameless hypocritical grifter but what politician isn’t some if not all these things? I personally think his is out of his depth and just clueless and incompetent

Peter B
Peter B
2 months ago

Reading this I find a sneaking sense of admiration for McSweeney, who is at least a man who seems to know what he believes and has some instincts I can agree with.
What I cannot understand is how this does – or ever could – align with what Starmer and the vast majority of Labour MPs actually believe. If McSweeney really believes what the article reports and despises the Fabian left, then I can’t help feeling that Starmer’s on borrowed time too. McSweeney doesn’t sound like the sort of man that suffers fools gladly. Is Starmer too stupid to realise this ?
Did anyone else find yesterday’s media reporting of these events somewhat farcical ? Sue Gray had apparently resigned. And yet been moved sideways into another (apparently made up on the spot) job. Presumably on the same salary and Ts and Cs*. Funny sort of resignation.
*: [updated] apparently she’s taking a pay cut

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

No doubt they’ll be airbrushing her out of the pictures in time for the May day parades.

nigel taylor
nigel taylor
2 months ago
Reply to  Peter B

and she’ll be part time ; hopefully no more than qne day a month

Jaden Johnson
Jaden Johnson
2 months ago

 He holds those officials who failed to protect the working-class girls of Rochdale in particular contempt. 

How ironic.

carl taylor
carl taylor
2 months ago

“The upshot of all this is a naturally blue Labour instinct that borrows the language and feelings of conservatism to pursue an older class-based politics. Rather than being some kind of re-run of Blairism, this is a politics more deeply rooted in Labour’s past.” Acknowledging all the sensible comments here pointing out the contradictions with this analysis – Starmer, technocracy, Lammy, to which I would add the non-class-based obsessions with identity politics and attacks on basic freedoms – which make it seem highly unlikely, I do hope there’s some truth to it.

Dorian Grier
Dorian Grier
2 months ago

“Now he needs to let McSweeney take control.”

Shouldn’t the Prime Minister take control? It sounds like McSweeney is setting the whole agenda.

Starmer is a worthless vacuum.

Rufus Firefly
Rufus Firefly
2 months ago

“Envoy for the regions and nations.”
Isn’t that Jim Hacker’s old job?

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
2 months ago
Reply to  Rufus Firefly

Nice one Rufus

Anna Bramwell
Anna Bramwell
2 months ago

Major completed Thatcher’s desperate war against inflation, unions out of control, and ludicrously high taxation, 97% anyone? He handed over a debt free Britain and a balanced budget. There was no depression under him. Does McTague mean Brown?

William Cameron
William Cameron
2 months ago

The description of the working model is obviously so flawed as to be bound to cause chaos.
Any model where everything has to be signed off by the boss always fails.
But add a model where some people are allowed to be gatekeepers to the boss – who still has to sign everything off – but they choose what he gets to see- and the inevitable shambles will ensue.
Govt should use the civil service properly and chuck out these unelected teenage politicos with zero management skill.

john jones
john jones
2 months ago

In the same way a poor workman blames his tools, it’s hard to see how even McSweeney can turn this ship around – the fundamental underlying challenge is still Starmer – the country has seen, especially in these past 3 months, that Starmer is not a politician.

This has major implications for government. Ok, M Sweeney can be kingmaker but he can’t, at the same time, be puppet master.

There are too many occasions, even if briefed, that Starmer will resort to being the technocratic barrister that he is. Starmer also suffers from an inherently weak Cabinet -who lack the processing power (s) ( aka ability) and presentation skills needed for a contemporary government – Reeves teflon is already looking decidedly flakey so early on in her tenure.

As many of us thought – it’s easy to lob grenades as an opposition party – it’s far harder to deliver when in government.

It’s said that external events buffet government – we ain’t seen nothing yet – Starmer is slightly unfortunate to only be able to deploy a ‘B’ team on match day.

Chris Quayle
Chris Quayle
2 months ago
Reply to  john jones

“Lack the processing power”, brilliant.Thick as a brick, in fact…

George Venning
George Venning
2 months ago

“there is a clear understanding within the group close to McSweeney in government that only by making the argument for reducing the numbers and being seen to have achieved a significant reduction can they hope to be reelected.”

Righto. Funny they didn’t think to campign on this topic isn’t it? Funny they didn’t even try to grasp the nettle of immigration when the public was desperately demanding to know what their plan for Government was.
The way you address a really intractable issue is by cutting through the nonsense to re-frame the confrontation. The immigration debate shouldn’t be about how nasty you would need to be to illegal migrants in order to stop them coming.
The debate ought to be about why the country needs high levels of legal migration in order to stave of further economic collapse. That is where the big nubers are coming from and it ought to be the focus.
A government that could answer that question, would have answers to quite a lot of other bread and butter political questions.
We’ve been waiting a long time now for McSweeney to dazzle us with the staggeringly popular policies that his preternatural sense for the concerns of the man in the street will help him to develop. But he didn’t put any of them in the manifesto and there wasn’t much evidence for them in the election campaign.
So far he has built a huge electoral majority on a much smaller fraction of the popular vote. That is a genuiine psephological achievement – albeit one that would only be possible in a democracy as sickly as our own. What it is not is evidence of the working class populism that McTague is always suggesting is just around the corner from McSweeney.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
2 months ago
Reply to  George Venning

That’s too logical for them, and requires common sense to understand.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  George Venning

We’ve been waiting a long time now for McSweeney to dazzle us with the staggeringly popular policies that his preternatural sense for the concerns of the man in the street will help him to develop“. Settle down! He’s not Dominic Cummings!

George Venning
George Venning
2 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Droll

Ian Johnston
Ian Johnston
2 months ago

This McSweeny fella sounds OK. I suspect though, hes in the wrong party if he cares about those poor girls in Rotherham.

Sadly, I’ve not detected a hint of anything except Starmerism to date.

And I’m not holding my breath that that’s about to change. His rabid response to the Southport protestors told me all I need to know about his views on the English working class.

Santiago Excilio
Santiago Excilio
2 months ago

Well it will be interesting to watch. Starmer is inherently a weak person. It shows in many ways, his inability to make his mind up, dithering on definitions, failing to stand up for the right in the face of wokery, taking down portraits, lack of even handedness, giving away territory for no reason. He’s weak, weak and yet also arrogant, and convinced of his own moral superiority. It’s not a very good combination – he’s a bit like a political version of Justin Welby, who is single handedly wrecking the CoE. Perhaps Starmer will do likewise for the UK unless someone can achieve a coercive grip on him. Will that be McSweeney? Maybe, but then again maybe not, the weak and frit will always lash out at those closest, so I wonder how long McSweeney will last?

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
2 months ago

What Starmer doesn’t wreck, I’m sure Ed Miliband will finish off.

R S Foster
R S Foster
2 months ago

…written in a brave effort to convince those of us who are instintively Blue Labour/Red Tory (ie most of the Country, beyond the Metropolitan Media and Political Class)…that Two-Tier/Free-Gears progressive London Lefty Sh!tshower of a Government don’t hate the Country, it’s history and values, and most of it’s people…and don’t intend to spend the next five years abolishing the place, trashing it’s past and it’s instinctive beliefs, and getting it’s own back on the rest of us for being horrid racist bigots…
…as you might gather, I am unconvinced…
…but at least Sue Grey has been suitably punished, not so much for betraying the Tory Government she should have been loyally serving…but for pouring a bucket of ordure on the idea that the Civil Service are indeed politically neutral…as opposed to being almost universally left-wing saboteurs of any and every Tory administration that the Electors expect them to serve to the best of their ability…
…the first task of the next such Government must be reforming it’s own apparatus…in parallel with defunding the BBC…so we can be grateful for that small mercy.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
2 months ago
Reply to  R S Foster

And everything, and mean EVERYTHING, needs to be in the manifesto so the House of Lords can’t reject it. After all, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
2 months ago

Rearranging a few deck chairs does not make for a sound vessel.

DenialARiverIn Islington
DenialARiverIn Islington
2 months ago

I’ve been a keen analyst and reader of UK politics for more than 40 years. I cannot ever remember seeing such basic dysfunction. It’s not about Gray. It’s not about McSweeny. It’s about a bunch of ideological amateurs lead by an ideological amateur. We really are in trouble with this shower.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
2 months ago

“… ordinary people who are not otherwise looked after by their employers, landlords …”

There aren’t many that are 🙂

Devonshire Dozer
Devonshire Dozer
2 months ago

The problem I have is that I have never met or spent any time with any of the people mentioned in this article. All that I know of them has been filtered by ‘the media’ and journalists like this. Apart from that, I have a little evidence based upon the consequences of their past behaviour. For example, in T2K’s case, I hold him personally responsible for the disgraceful treatment received by Julian Assange and others.
If I take the article at face value, all I see is a listing of yet more people who have never had a real job. They are all career politicians or people have worked in the ‘pubic sector’ and been given a sinecure. In other words . . . more of the same. Some have attracted the favour of a journo here.
My hackles always rise when I see the words “Landslide Victory” attributed to the red rosettes. It was nothing of the sort. 80% of the electorate didn’t vote for them. Millions of people couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the blue rosettes. Looking at a simple ratio of seats/(votes for the party represented) throws up numbers that reveal a massive under representation in Westminster of a lot of people. The red rosettes didn’t so much ‘win’; more that the others all ‘lost’.
Doubtless Starmer, McSweeny & their cronies will do as their predecessors did & simply promote whatever it is that the UN/WEF/WHO tell them to. Thus, they will be “taking back control” as promised . . . but not in the way that the majority of the electorate might have hoped. A plague on all their houses.
I’m popping out for a fag while I still can, whilst contemplating the recently registered chickens behind the pub garden. That lunacy is evil – and not a dicky bird here or elsewhere in the MSM.

Susie Bell
Susie Bell
2 months ago

I expect Morgan McSweeney will frame this love letter and send it to his Mother. Come back in a couple of years Tom and tell us how he did. It is a bit premature to write the review ahead of opening night.

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
2 months ago

I hope McSweeney isn’t another Cromwell, even Thomas. The world doesn’t need another one of that family! What it comes down to is that McSweeney is smarter than Gray.

Miriam Cotton
Miriam Cotton
2 months ago

Is that you, Morgan?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

If Starmer’s very own ‘McAlpine Fusilier’ is an old Labour retread it doesn’t augur well for the Starmer ‘project’, whatever that is. Old Labour was in hock to the unions and gave the UK the winter of discontent and thirteen Thatcher years. It took a statist approach and favoured the public over private sector, and the result was industrial strife, underinvestment and economic stagnation. McSweeney is a party apparatchik who sees winning elections as the point of party politics, but has no experience ensuring policies are implemented or in dealing with the civil service. If Gray’s problem was her lack of roots in the Labour movement, McSweeney’s is his lack experience anywhere else, except briefly on a building site.

charlie martell
charlie martell
2 months ago

Starmer was not ” ruthless”. He was weak. He went to inordinate lengths to hire Gray, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable, probably breaching them. In no way did he want her gone.

But he had to sack her because he can’t control his ministers, he can’t control his party and he couldn’t control Gray. He is out of his depth, a man with no vision of what he wants to do and nothing about him other than progressive box ticking.

He is a wooden automaton, lost in a moving world. He looks miserable, as if there was more bad news to come.

James Moore
James Moore
2 months ago

No one can save Starmer after his shambolic start. He didn’t have a chance of succeeding from day one. At best he could be described as unlucky. He has a dearth of experience and talent available to form a cabinet. Lammy as Foreign Secretary? This single appointment sums up Starmer’s lack of judgement and capability.
If he lasts until next May he’ll have done well. The country not so well.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  James Moore

Who would replace him though?

George Venning
George Venning
2 months ago
Reply to  James Moore

This is why the “ming vase” strategy was such a disaster.
I’ve lost count of the arguments I’ve had with labour voting friends who said that the whole point of politics is to get elected and there’s nothing you can do in opposition so the right strategy is to say whatever you need to say to get elected.
And I would say: Balls. The point of opposition, especially when the Government of the day is as deeply and profoundly unpopular as the Johnson/Truss/Sunak Tories, is to change what political common sense looks like.
Minimising your differences with the Government robs you of a mandate and the failure to make big promises gives your supporters no reason to stick with you when the going gets tough. Starmer went out of his way to alienate his own supporters. “There’s the door” he said, as he shoved a good third of the membership through it.
Starmer et al not only frustrated Corbyn when he was trying to make the most of a once in a generation opportunity to change the politics of this country post 2017 but they utterly failed to showcase a vision of their own and to build popular support for that vision whilst in opposition.
It’s pretty hard to summon much sympathy for people with the Labour Right’s unappealing combination of ruthless nastiness, political incompetence and low ambitions.

Tony Kilmister
Tony Kilmister
2 months ago

‘To reach McSweeney…the PM had to walk out of his office past Gray and her team, down the main corridor…’.

Do they not have a Wi-Fi communication connection at No10? Isn’t Starmer able to WhatsApp McSweeney from his, hopefully not Labour donor freebie, smartphone? And shouldn’t Starmer be summoning McSweeney to his office rather than having to sheepishly sidle past Sue Gray to meet McSweeney?

Judging by McSweeney’s ruthless dispatching of Gray, it’s unlikely he would have been intimidated by her teacher’s-pet office position.

Sounds like nonsense.

Kiddo Cook
Kiddo Cook
2 months ago

“……entirely different moral principle that you shouldn’t have children if you can’t afford them.” And whose principle is that, exactly? The same cohort who put their oh so massively important jobs before their families, who freeze their eggs because they’re worth it at 45? Makes me laugh, so morally principled are this cohort they’re happy to import human capital rather than procreate themselves but deny investment from the state in those braver than themselves…..and make praying silently in public a criminal offence. Society, what society?

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Kiddo Cook

“Praying silently in public” is a criminal offence? Where would this praying be taking place exactly?

Davy Humerme
Davy Humerme
2 months ago

McTague makes some bold statements about the Starmer kitchen cabinet. I agree with Devonshire Dozer that our politicians and their advisers are drawn from a uniquely shallow pool. They are all people who see politics as a more elevated form of celebrity. If McSweeney really is blue labour then he has created its antithesis; the law fare larking careerist Starmer.

Walter Marvell
Walter Marvell
2 months ago

They are not soft left Fabian. They are reflex hardcore neo socialist class warriors and full blown knee bending progressives. A nasty brqnd new Red Gusrdy ideological mix with eco nuttery guarwjteeing economic chaos. They have set a course to the hard left with deranged swings at the Rich Non Doms and Pensioners, an assault on the North Sea energy industry and pure vandalism with private schools. There is no way McSwinnry can steer Starmerism onto a new Blue Labour course – we already get what they are and who they are too – sleazy pious greedy hypocrites.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
2 months ago
Reply to  Walter Marvell

They’re really not that good WM.

John Dewhirst
John Dewhirst
2 months ago

Starmer will do or say whatever he must to stay in power. However, having well and truly dropped the ming vase, no amount of puppeteering by McSweeney will ensure that Starmer can provide the inspirational leadership and respect that is needed for this government to deliver on its promise of change. This stinks of a Mandelsonesque coup but will be insufficient to pacify Starmer’s enemies within his party. It is incredible to witness such an almighty car crash so soon after the election but the contradictions within the Labour Party were always going to make it difficult to govern. Always good at selling the problem and blaming the Tories, the genius of McSweeney desperately needs to find a direction for Starmer beyond survival.

Mike Michaels
Mike Michaels
2 months ago

Not easy the Martin Borman role.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
2 months ago

Understanding of the electrate is that the 20% who voted Labour.
An over promoted Labour local council hack.

Kayla Marx
Kayla Marx
2 months ago

Can’t help but wonder how it came about that Sue Grey earned more than the PM. Anti-Gray sentiment seemed to escalate when that information became public.

Martin M
Martin M
2 months ago
Reply to  Kayla Marx

I wouldn’t have thought that would be unusual. Her salary would be based on what she earned as a Permanent Secretary, which would probably have been more that the PM earned. I think senior civil servants earning more than Ministers has been the case for a while. I recall that in the TV show “Yes, Prime Minister”, Sir Humphrey earned more than Hacker.

Celeste V. Ratcliffe
Celeste V. Ratcliffe
2 months ago
Reply to  Kayla Marx

Don’t resist!
It’s ok to be normal.
Defend yourself make peace.

Celeste V. Ratcliffe
Celeste V. Ratcliffe
2 months ago
Reply to  Kayla Marx

Manufacturing should always remain the same.
Policies at the human level should never change.

0 0
0 0
2 months ago

Sensible and apposite observations about McSweeney’s political history and what part that might play in defining and underlining this Government’s central mission, among the various hints and promises. More could be said about working class ‘social conservatism’ vs missile class liberal idealism, of course, as the fate of Labour will depend on how well those can be woven together.

Would have been better, however, if McTague had stuck to the Callaghan-Blair/Brown comparison rather than bringing in Thatcher, a distraction from the main issues.

John Lamble
John Lamble
1 month ago

Good grief. Fancy mentioning Ernest Bevin in the context of today’s risible shower. He was a great man even if it isn’t ‘politically correct’ to say so.