The admission that explains Starmer’s downfall

Morgan McSweeney’s first interview was notable less for the revelations it contained than for what it confirmed. Again and again, Starmer’s former chief of staff returned to the same explanation for Labour’s struggles in office: the party was not ready for government.

In his hour-long interview with Nick Robinson, McSweeney explained that there had long been an assumption it would take considerable time for Labour to recover from its historic 2019 defeat before returning to Downing Street. Yet even when Labour was more than 20 points ahead in the opinion polls, he said much of 2022 and 2023 was spent building the party’s electoral machine rather than preparing for government.

“Early in 2024, when we were preparing for the general election, I was sitting down with Pat McFadden, windowless rooms, hour after hour, planning for day one, I did start to realise that we hadn’t done enough to prepare for government. We got exposed for that, I think, early.”

He points to the lack of a fully fleshed-out plan as being behind the debacle around winter fuel, which he concedes was means-tested at too low a level. McSweeney said the mistake “defined the government”, yet it’s only with hindsight that he sees the error of judgement – having not raised concerns at the time.

Such admissions, while not surprising, are infuriating. Activists and candidates across the country knocked on doors with hope in their hearts for a brighter tomorrow, with the promise that a Labour government would do things differently. They trusted people like McSweeney and others to have put the work in to have a clear path for delivery. Instead, he accepts that, by his own account, they did far from enough.

The point he makes about needing to deliver for people quickly and not having enough of a theory of how to do that should have been obvious to even the most amateur follower of British politics. After being let down by successive Tory Prime Ministers, and with Labour entering government on a manifesto promising ‘Change’, it’s hardly rocket science to conclude that the public expected to see almost immediate improvement. Instead, we offered incremental change at a time when trust in politicians was all but rock bottom.

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For me, the interview was somehow reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz; Labour’s election guru and politically savvy operator was exposed as yet another figure found wanting, now leaving the political stage for others to clean the mess he has helped create. Rather than being the man who helped deliver Labour a landslide election win, McSweeney’s legacy will be to have squandered the first two years of that rare thing, a Labour government, through a lack of preparation.

Perhaps then McSweeney offers a cautionary tale for Starmer’s successor – entering Number 10 without a plan about what to do when you get there is a sure-fire way to chart a course for disaster. Yet, even with this damning indictment likely to serve as Starmer’s political epitaph, the outgoing Prime Minister has given Andy Burnham even less time than he had to come up with a plan for government. We can only hope for the party’s sake, and more importantly the country, that Burnham and his team have the vision and drive to hit the ground from day one.

As McSweeney has come to realise all too late, winning power is only half the job. The harder part is knowing exactly what to do once you have it.

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