“Outraged” by the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite his known links with Jeffrey Epstein, as well as a broader “autocratic culture in No. 10”, the MPs’ ire was directed, in part, at Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.
“In the end, the PM had little option,” said Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby. Starmer has “lost the backbone of his operation” but many MPs are now calling for his head.
Starmer will be “disorientated” after McSweeney’s departure, said Patrick Maguire in The Times.
Arguably, the Irishman “remade” the Labour Party, leading the charge against the confrontation-shy “Librarian Labour” stereotype, and his departure has left Starmer “adrift”.
It is unclear what a post-McSweeney Labour Party stands for, apart from an “unreconstructed, middle-of-the-road progressivism” embodied by Starmer.
McSweeney’s resignation could offer a “new beginning” for the PM and his government, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian.
If the party wants to change public opinion, and recover from a series of major policy U-turns, Starmer had “better grab it”.
The former chief of staff had become the “punch bag for everything that has gone wrong” for Labour since the 2024 election. “Now it can change tack.”
The PM’s change in personnel could “signal” a moment of “new purpose” for his struggling government. One thing is for sure: “there are no more excuses”.
No. 10 is in “full-blown survival mode”, said Beth Rigby on Sky News. Starmer will be clinging to the hope that McSweeney’s departure will “go some way to satisfying some of his MPs who were demanding a reset”.Labour’s crisis “won’t be fixed by a sacrificial resignation”, said Neal Lawson in The New Statesman. Starmer is the face of a “deep-rooted and systemic crisis” of identity that has “dominated” Labour for decades.
“In every sense – morally, politically and electorally – Labour has been brought to its knees.” If Starmer wants to drag the party towards success, he needs a “total reset of the Labour project”.
“What could a Starmer government possibly achieve now?” said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. McSweeney’s departure will buy a little “extra time” for the PM, “like a patient bargaining for expensive life-extending drugs”.
However, that “doesn’t change the diagnosis: this is a government that no longer works”.
by BILL HEANEY
As a former special adviser to the First Minister of Scotland, can I say that I was not surprised today when Anas Sarwar’s decision to call for Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation drowned in a puddle outside the St Stephen’s entrance to the Palace of Westminster. It hardly got up the steps to the Central Lobby.
That happened because Anas Sarwar, doubtless been bouyed up by enthisiastic reaction to the excellent speech he had made about the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital during First Minister’s Questions at Holyrood on Thursday.
Nearly everyone Left of centre promised to back him when he said Starmer had to go if Labour were not to be slaughtered at the Scottish Parliament election on May 7.
Guess what? Sarwar was deserted at the eleventh hour by his Labour “colleagues” who backed Starmer in the clear knowledge that they would be the ones who would pay with their seats for their “disloyalty to the party”. Self preservation kicked in. Thatcher’s Me First policy became the order of the day. That’s the one the Labour administration at West Dunbartonshire Council [pictured below] adopt when they ignore the wishes of the electorate. Such a parcel of Rogues in a nation.
