Labour unprepared for government, admits ex-PM aide McSweeney
Keir Starmer's former chief of staff has admitted Labour entered government without a plan to deliver rapid change, warning that the UK state is "out of shape" and unfit for a volatile world.
Morgan McSweeney, the election strategist credited with Labour’s 2024 victory, has publicly admitted the party was not prepared to govern. Speaking on the BBC’s Political Thinking podcast, the former No 10 chief of staff said Labour failed to grasp the realities of the current global era or how to enact quick reforms.
McSweeney warned that the British state itself is a fundamental obstacle to economic and social progress. “In lots of ways the state is really out of shape and is unable to deliver for people,” he said. He took shared responsibility for the lack of preparation rather than blaming his predecessor, Sue Gray. For European partners and investors, this is a stark admission that the UK’s governing machinery may struggle to execute policy despite a large parliamentary majority.
A core failure, according to McSweeney, was the absence of a strategy to deliver visible results to a public scarred by broken political promises. “You have to deliver quite quickly for people for them to see the change quickly, and I think we didn’t come in with enough of a theory about how we would do that, and why that was important,” he said. He acknowledged that the government set the wrong tone at the outset, noting Labour should have been “way more optimistic when we started”.
The interview also offered a window into the unpredictable diplomatic environment the UK is currently navigating. McSweeney recounted a call between Starmer and Donald Trump where the US president complained that foxes were becoming obese from eating birds killed by “windmills”. “He went on to say that as the foxes ate so many birds and became lazy, they became fat, and as they became so fat, people no longer knew what kind of a creature they were,” McSweeney added, confirming Trump was “Definitely” trying to be funny.
McSweeney stepped down in February over his ties to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. He confirmed he is leaving politics for the foreseeable future to pursue a “completely different direction”. However, he expressed enthusiasm for future structural changes, backing Andy Burnham’s proposed “No 10 North” to shift power away from the capital. “If at the top of government there are people who don’t just have a desk somewhere outside London, but actually live their whole lives outside of London, I think that will be a good thing,” he said.
