Morgan McSweeney Says Labour Did Not Prepare Enough for Power Ahead of UK Election

Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff, said Labour “did not do enough to prepare for power” in the run-up to the UK general election and told the BBC’s Nick Robinson that “We didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to.”

“- Published Sir Keir Starmer's former chief of staff has conceded that Labour failed to properly prepare for power in the run-up to its landslide general election win”

BBC

McSweeney said Labour was “now in a very different era than when Labour was last in government,” and argued that the party lacked “enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it.”

BBC

He said voters needed change “quite quickly” and that Labour “didn’t come in with enough of a theory about how we would do that,” linking the party’s early difficulties to preparation rather than a single person.

In the BBC interview, he also described that he “did start to realise that we hadn't done enough to prepare for government” during planning meetings early in 2024.

McSweeney told the BBC he was “still processing” Sir Keir’s political demise and said Labour’s time in opposition “went quickly,” framing his remarks as a first public account after his resignation earlier this year.

McSweeney said he took responsibility for Labour’s lack of preparation, telling the BBC, “I take my own responsibilities for that, rather than blaming one person.”

He argued Labour should have been “way more optimistic” in its first months in office, but said it failed to deliver results quickly enough to satisfy voters.

BreakingNews.ie

The BBC reported that McSweeney described an early decision to remove winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners as “defined the government in a way that did us a lot of damage,” and said the party later U-turned.

He said it was not a mistake to means-test winter fuel payments so better-off pensioners did not receive them, but added the threshold for claiming them had been set at “too low a level.”

In the same interview, he said there was “no question” the government had been damaged by an early row over freebies given to ministers by donors, while noting Sir Keir accepted thousands of pounds’ worth of clothing and spectacles in opposition.

McSweeney said he was speaking publicly because he needed “to move on to a new chapter” in his life after his period as Downing Street chief of staff and as a senior Labour strategist.

“Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff has admitted Labour did not do enough preparation before they were elected into government”

HuffPost UK

He told the BBC he had only made one other public-facing appearance, when he spoke at the Foreign Affairs Committee in April to answer questions about his role in appointing Peter Mandelson as the ambassador to the US.

In a separate account, HuffPost UK said McSweeney was forced to quit over his links to Peter Mandelson earlier this year, and described his remarks as coming after Starmer announced he was stepping down as Labour leader and prime minister last Monday.

McSweeney also said he has “no intention of coming back to British politics in the foreseeable,” while adding he had been out door-knocking for Labour during the Holyrood election in Lanarkshire where he lives with his wife Imogen Walker, the Labour MP for Hamilton and Clyde Valley.

He told the BBC he was interested in “the future of democratic security” and “the impact AI will have,” and said he found Donald Trump “much funnier than I expected him to be,” recalling a joke about foxes eating birds killed by “windmills.”