The reaction to the resignation of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney will naturally focus on what the Prime Minister has lost. And it’s true, he has lost his most senior advisor, his closest ally, his last line of defense.

McSweeney in his statement today conceded that he took “full responsibility” for advising Keir Starmer to appoint Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the US despite his close relationship with sex-offender financier Jeffrey Epstein. The New Labour grandee’s connection to Epstein was known before he was appointed, yet more information has come out since the Trump administration’s release of files.

Keir Starmer, however, has a history of turning upheaval to his advantage. Could he do the same with this calamity?

Two potential opportunities stand out. Firstly, with his chief strategist out of the way, Starmer can undertake a much more significant reset than any that he’s attempted so far. Instead of the Reform-focused strategy of the McSweeney era, Starmer can please his party with a pivot to the Left. Note this doesn’t mean a lurch to neo-Corbynism, but rather a primary focus on winning back voters from the Greens, the SNP and Labour’s other Left-of-center rivals. This is not to say that’s what Starmer wants to do, but if Labour loses the Gorton and Denton by-election to the Greens later this month, then the pressure will become irresistible.

It’s easier to signal a switch in strategy through personnel changes than through policy changes (especially policies with eye-watering price tags). And that brings us to the second big opportunity arising from today’s resignation. As well as taking the fall in his statement, McSweeney also pointed out that he “did not oversee the due diligence and vetting process”, which he argued “must now be fundamentally overhauled”.

This raises a couple of key questions: If not McSweeney, then who did oversee this debacle? And given the consequences, shouldn’t this person also resign?

Interesting, then, to see Justice Secretary David Lammy — who had oversight of the diplomatic service when he was Foreign Secretary last year — popping up in the weekend papers. According to a report in the Telegraph, “friends” of Lammy (who is now also Deputy Prime Minister) said that “he had warned against appointing Lord Mandelson as the ambassador to the US”.

Let’s hope that the transparency we were promised last week doesn’t just apply to the content of the official vetting advice, but also to who signed it off and when.

For the Prime Minister, the resignation of a senior member of the Cabinet (other than himself) over this matter, would be highly convenient. Not only would it distract the media’s attention, it would also give Starmer an excuse for a full-scale reshuffle. For instance, he could finally dispense with his lame duck Chancellor Rachel Reeves while also buying the support of his most dangerous internal critics by promoting Ed Miliband, bringing back Angela Rayner and finding a ministerial job for the deputy Labour leader, Lucy Powell. It wouldn’t hurt to push forward some fresh faces from the 2024 intake too.

Even those of Starmer’s colleagues who want him to resign as PM by the summer, might be willing to see him survive long enough to clear out the deadwood and reshape the government. It might also allow time to choose a new Labour leader without having to appoint an acting Prime Minister — which would be necessary if Starmer resigned immediately. At the very least, there’d be time to make sure a suitable Deputy Prime Minister was in place should the need arise.

No doubt, McSweeney’s resignation is another defeat for Labour after weeks of bad headlines.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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