Keir Starmer has reshuffled his Downing Street operation after Sue Gray resigned less than a week before his government’s 100th day in power, appointing an Irish strategist in the most senior position.
The prime minister has named Morgan McSweeney from the townland of Codrum, just outside Macroom, Co Cork, as his new chief of staff.
As the brains behind Starmer’s leadership campaign, McSweeney (47) is credited with having brought the prime minister to power. He entered No 10 as head of political strategy, in charge of charting the party’s path to another victory in five years’ time.
When it emerged there were rival power bases around McSweeney and Gray in No 10, few had any doubt he would survive any fallout. He has now been appointed chief of staff, with unrivalled influence, and is likely to bring a much sharper political focus to the job.
McSweeney is adored by many staffers, with some party figures retaining more affection for him than they do for Starmer. The highest form of praise in Labour HQ has been said to be: “Morgan loves it”. However, he is something of a bogeyman on the left after leading the think tank Labour Together in a campaign to purge the party of Jeremy Corbyn’s influence.
After working in Labour’s attack unit in the New Labour years, McSweeney cut his teeth as chief of staff to the then Lambeth council leader Steve Reed, who is now a Cabinet minister, and helped defeat the British National party in Barking and Dagenham.
He divides his time between Scotland and Westminster. His wife, Imogen Walker, is Labour’s MP for Hamilton and Clyde Valley and the couple have a son.
McSweeney is the son of accountant Tim McSweeney and his wife Carmel. He was educated at Macroom De Le Salle College, played Gaelic football for Macroom and boxed at Rylane Boxing Club.
He moved to London in 1994 and worked on building sites. He also attended Middlesex University where he studied marketing and politics. He joined the Labour Party in 1997 and started his career with the party four years later.
He is not the only member of the his family to hold a senior political position, as his first cousin Clare Mungovan currently serves as a special adviser to Taoiseach Simon Harris.
Evelyn McSweeney, mother of Clare and aunt to Morgan, described her nephew as a hard worker who was left with little choice but to be interested in politics given that he grew up in a family of Fine Gael supporters.
“We were certainly proud of him when the results came in from the election. And we are even more proud of him now having achieved what he has as chief of staff.
“My father used to go out canvassing for the grandfather of Michael Creed TD and from a young age we were helping out during elections writing envelopes and so on. He (McSweeney) had to be used to doing it as well.”
Other fresh appointments in the reshuffle include Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, both deputy chief of staff. Alakeson was Starmer’s director of external relations in opposition and entered No 10 as political director, running a team to help shape messaging, conduct research and keep the government on the front foot. Her new role as deputy chief of staff is likely to still be highly political.
Jill Cuthbertson is one of the prime minister’s most relied-upon political organisers and gatekeepers. She entered No 10 in a senior role as director of government relations and will now be a co-deputy chief of staff.
James Lyons, meanwhile, has been appointed as director of strategic communications. Lyons is hugely experienced as a former tabloid and broadsheet journalist who went on to big jobs in PR dealing with crisis situations, and boasts connections in Westminster among journalists and politicians. Having worked for the Daily Mirror and Sunday Times, he became a communications chief for the NHS in 2017 and rose to a director job, helping the health service navigate the challenges of the Covid pandemic. He left the job last year to join TikTok.
Ninjeri Pandit has been appointed principal private secretary. A former NHS digital executive who joined No 10 to focus on health policy, she became director of its policy unit and will now be the prime minister’s principal private secretary – a key Civil Service role. - Additional reporting The Guardian
