To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.This video can not be playedPaul SeddonPolitical reporter2 July 2026, 13:00 BSTUpdated 1 hour agoSir 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.In his first media interview, Morgan McSweeney told the BBC’s Nick Robinson he did not yet have all the answers for the prime minister’s dramatic downfall just two years after he led the party back into office.But he admitted Labour had not given enough thought to how the world had changed since the party last took power in the 1990s. He added the party should have been “way more optimistic” in its first few months, and had been unable to deliver results quickly enough to satisfy voters.He told the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast: “We didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to. We are now in a very different era than when Labour was last in government.”I think we didn’t have enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it, what that meant for the state.”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.”McSweeney ran Labour’s successful 2024 election campaign and followed Sir Keir into office as his head of political strategy.He has kept a low public profile despite his instrumental role behind the scenes, but was thrust into the limelight earlier this year when he resigned over his role in Peter Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US. McSweeney said he was “still processing” Sir Keir’s political demise, but identified a lack of preparation as a key factor in the government’s early troubles, adding that Labour’s time in opposition “went quickly”. What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the storyPolitical Thinking with Nick RobinsonAvailable nowListen on SoundsHe said that there had been a widespread expectation that Labour would require at least two elections to return to power after its crushing defeat in 2019, and “quite a lot of people” thought it needed a plan for defeat rather than victory in 2024.He recalled that during planning meetings early that year, he “did start to realise that we hadn’t done enough to prepare for government”.McSweeney took on the chief of staff role three months after Labour’s return to office, replacing top civil servant Sue Gray, who was appointed the year before the election and tasked with leading preparations for government.Asked about Gray’s role in the run-up to taking power, he replied it was “not about one individual”, adding: “When I say we weren’t prepared, I really do mean the Labour Party more generally”. He added: “I take my own responsibilities for that, rather than blaming one person.”Sir Keir himself had made arguments about how Britain had changed in the years since Labour’s last term in office, he went on, but “I don’t think that we really discussed what that meant for how we prepare for government”. Who is Starmer’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney?8 FebruaryPM’s chief aide McSweeney quits over Mandelson row8 FebruaryWinter fuel ‘damage’Reflecting on Labour’s early months in office, when it complained of the state of the public finances it inherited from the Conservatives, he said the party should have been “way more optimistic when we started”.He admitted an early decision to remove winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners, a policy on which it would later U-turn, had been a mistake and had “defined the government in a way that did us a lot of damage”.He said it was not a mistake to means-test winter fuel payments so that better-off pension …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.This video can not be playedPaul SeddonPolitical reporter2 July 2026, 13:00 BSTUpdated 1 hour agoSir 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.In his first media interview, Morgan McSweeney told the BBC’s Nick Robinson he did not yet have all the answers for the prime minister’s dramatic downfall just two years after he led the party back into office.But he admitted Labour had not given enough thought to how the world had changed since the party last took power in the 1990s. He added the party should have been “way more optimistic” in its first few months, and had been unable to deliver results quickly enough to satisfy voters.He told the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast: “We didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to. We are now in a very different era than when Labour was last in government.”I think we didn’t have enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it, what that meant for the state.”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.”McSweeney ran Labour’s successful 2024 election campaign and followed Sir Keir into office as his head of political strategy.He has kept a low public profile despite his instrumental role behind the scenes, but was thrust into the limelight earlier this year when he resigned over his role in Peter Mandelson’s appointment as the UK’s ambassador to the US. McSweeney said he was “still processing” Sir Keir’s political demise, but identified a lack of preparation as a key factor in the government’s early troubles, adding that Labour’s time in opposition “went quickly”. What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the storyPolitical Thinking with Nick RobinsonAvailable nowListen on SoundsHe said that there had been a widespread expectation that Labour would require at least two elections to return to power after its crushing defeat in 2019, and “quite a lot of people” thought it needed a plan for defeat rather than victory in 2024.He recalled that during planning meetings early that year, he “did start to realise that we hadn’t done enough to prepare for government”.McSweeney took on the chief of staff role three months after Labour’s return to office, replacing top civil servant Sue Gray, who was appointed the year before the election and tasked with leading preparations for government.Asked about Gray’s role in the run-up to taking power, he replied it was “not about one individual”, adding: “When I say we weren’t prepared, I really do mean the Labour Party more generally”. He added: “I take my own responsibilities for that, rather than blaming one person.”Sir Keir himself had made arguments about how Britain had changed in the years since Labour’s last term in office, he went on, but “I don’t think that we really discussed what that meant for how we prepare for government”. Who is Starmer’s former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney?8 FebruaryPM’s chief aide McSweeney quits over Mandelson row8 FebruaryWinter fuel ‘damage’Reflecting on Labour’s early months in office, when it complained of the state of the public finances it inherited from the Conservatives, he said the party should have been “way more optimistic when we started”.He admitted an early decision to remove winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners, a policy on which it would later U-turn, had been a mistake and had “defined the government in a way that did us a lot of damage”.He said it was not a mistake to means-test winter fuel payments so that better-off pension …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
