It is the coldest of comforts for Keir Starmer that those now moving against him include individuals who tend to preface their plots with an expression of regret: “None of us want to be doing this.” For the current team in No 10 to survive much longer, they say, it would require this government to be fundamentally different from the way it has always been.
Even before the summer, the chatter among Labour MPs was that Starmer could not last until the next general election. Then came the phase two relaunch that was swiftly followed by the Prime Minister losing his deputy, his US ambassador, and his head of political strategy—all in a mere 10 days.
Being part of the Starmer project yet posing the biggest threat as a potential rival due to her popularity with party members, Angela Rayner was ironically Starmer’s strongest line of defence. Without her waiting in the wings, he is left exposed.
The revelations around Lord Mandelson’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, resulting in his sacking, gave concerned Labour MPs another reason to doubt their leader’s judgment and that of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. He, in turn, has been weakened by the departure of his closest ally in No 10, Paul Ovenden, whose position was deemed unsustainable after the upcoming book *The Fraud* handed messages to ITV showing he had retold sexually explicit jokes about Diane Abbott in 2017.
That series of blows had Downing Street rocking on its heels and has drained Starmer of authority. His only safety, say some, is a stand-off between rival factions plotting to replace him. Even that stasis is unstable, however, and now enemies are circling his last defence.
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### Operation Red and Internal Threats
The Conservative Party’s Operation Red September was aimed at eliminating Mandelson. The next scalp in their sights, Operation Red October, is McSweeney.
While the quiet ginger-haired man from Cork is credited with winning the leadership election for Starmer in 2020, and the keys to No 10 in 2024, he was already the subject of ire among many MPs. It is to him that these critics attribute the leadership’s sharpest edges—from the iron fist used in matters of party discipline to the aggressive pursuit of Reform-leaning voters at the expense, they believe, of more progressive ones.
Before running Starmer’s leadership campaign, McSweeney was director of Labour Together, a group later recast as a think tank. He brought in significant donations but failed to declare them to the Electoral Commission as required.
This was first reported in early 2021 after Hannah O’Rourke, his successor as head of the organisation, discovered the mistake and worked to rectify it. The House understands that, once O’Rourke alerted the commission to what she suspected was an error, the independent regulator decided the group definitely should have been declaring donations—not because it was a campaign group (it was in fact policy-focused) but because its board was made up entirely of Labour Party members. It was thus considered a membership association and fell under reporting rules.
A well-placed source says McSweeney may well have simply made a mistake because he is very disorganised. Others claim, however, that he concealed donations deliberately, either to protect the identities of funders such as Jewish philanthropist Trevor Chinn or to hide from Corbynites then leading the party how much money was being raised.
It is understood that, in a January 2019 meeting in Parliament, McSweeney had assured MPs involved in the project that donations were being fully declared. Although Labour Together was fined by the Electoral Commission in 2021, the Tories hoped to relitigate the matter after obtaining private legal advice sent to McSweeney allegedly pointing to a deliberate attempt to mislead. Yet, on Friday, the Commission confirmed that it would not be reopening the investigation.
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### Labour Together’s Original Vision and Its Divergence
The chief of staff’s Labour Together past is coming back to haunt him in more ways than this one. Those involved in its early days remember that McSweeney spent years pitching the group not as a vehicle for a leadership that would drag the party rightwards but as “Corbynism without Corbyn.”
They say the Starmer project was doomed as soon as McSweeney strayed from Labour Together’s original purpose: uniting both a broad left in the party and a big enough voter coalition in the country with a story of community and national pride plus a big change economic agenda. The intention was to neutralise the concerns of the socially conservative while remaining true to Labour values.
If he had stuck with this deep, long-term work, say its advocates, he and the Prime Minister would be far more sure-footed now.
“It is the most breathtakingly brilliant and cynical operation I’ve ever witnessed,” says one observer.
Labour Together has been written up since Starmer’s internal victory as a leadership campaign group, yet to most of its participants at the time, that is wrong. While there was a sense someone would emerge as a successor with a more refined politics and a clean bill of health on antisemitism, it was never clear who that would be. After all, Lisa Nandy—Starmer’s leadership rival—was a Labour Together director.
Rachel Reeves, Shabana Mahmood, Wes Streeting, Steve Reed, and Bridget Phillipson partook, yet so did Jon Cruddas, Jim McMahon, Ed Miliband, and Lucy Powell. Starmer was barely involved.
When the 2019 result triggered a leadership election, the Labour Together MPs split off into the Starmer and Nandy camps, while people from its wider network backed Rebecca Long-Bailey and briefly Clive Lewis too.
Ultimately, much of politics is about relationships. Starmer never had many of these (Miliband and Tulip Siddiq, both helpful in getting him selected as a 2015 Labour candidate, were among the few). McSweeney did have them, but in the journey to becoming No 10 chief of staff, a good chunk were lost.
Now, much of the Labour Party’s large middle feels neglected by McSweeney, Starmer, and the project—and they are starting to fight back.
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### The Soft Left Fightback
Neal Lawson, chair of centre-left pressure group Compass, is one such figure.
In the 2015 to 2019 period, McSweeney had spent hours sitting in Lawson’s flat and even joined Compass on a strategy weekend in the countryside to discuss Gramscian ideas and a new way of doing politics.
“The professionalisation of Corbynism was the proposition, but for McSweeney, it turned out to be a tool for winning an internal election, not for running the party and country,” Lawson says.
Lawson today complains of the McSweeney tendency—its hyperfactionalism—and how that deforms your politics by being so narrow, brittle, and one-sided. Labour Together’s work at the time, he believes, was an undercover job to wrestle control of the party and not only turn it in a different direction but against those people it was working with.
“It is the most breathtakingly brilliant and cynical operation I’ve ever witnessed,” he tells The House now.
Others involved in those years reckon this level of calculated underhandedness is not feasible: for them, McSweeney is simply a talented organiser who was genuinely interested in bridge-building before figures such as Peter Mandelson reshaped his thinking.
Whatever the truth, the motivation for those targeting McSweeney is clear: Starmer, it is widely believed, is finished without him.
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### The Deputy Leadership Race and New Groups Emerging
In opposition, it was the demotion of Anneliese Dodds and the attempted sacking of Angela Rayner that especially hurt. In government, it has been the welfare cuts and the suspension of MPs like Rachael Maskell.
Now, after years of feeling like a doormat, the soft left is undergoing a resurgence.
In the deputy leadership race triggered by Rayner’s resignation, the No 10 candidate Bridget Phillipson (settled on after some prevarication as Ali McGovern was also considered) will go up against Lucy Powell.
Sore from her sacking as Commons leader, Powell—who is not soft left exactly but from the party’s middle—is seen as most likely to win on the basis that party members will want to signal their dissatisfaction with the government’s direction.
A new Labour group has also launched: Mainstream. It officially brings together Compass and the soft left’s Open Labour; less formally, it also encompasses the Blue Labour curious and soft Corbynites.
Its initial list of signatories included Momentum founder Jon Lansman and former Blair-era minister John Denham, who were sworn enemies once upon a time. It is this pluralism that its organisers would like to emphasise.
Attention, though, has been drawn chiefly to a single signatory: Andy Burnham. His allies are increasingly excited by the prospect of a bid.
“It would be great if Andy came back,” says one northern Labour backbencher. “As mayor, he’s been amazing. That vision, that communication—it’s everything that we’re lacking at the moment. He could unify people.”
Burnham has backed Powell for the deputy leadership. While her team naturally denies that her fight against Phillipson is a proxy for Burnham vs Starmer, becoming deputy leader comes with a seat on Labour’s national executive committee (NEC)—the body that oversees the selection of parliamentary candidates.
Although it had long been assumed that Burnham would be blocked outright by the NEC if he stood to be a candidate in a by-election ahead of a run at the top job, it is now thought the leadership is too weak for such a bold move. More under-the-radar steps could be taken against him but, in any case, an ally on the NEC is always useful.
“I don’t think Lucy is a proxy for Andy,” says the same MP. “But would she be a significant voice for Andy on the NEC compared to Bridget? Absolutely.”
And while there is no guarantee Labour could win a by-election in Greater Manchester against Reform right now, “if anyone can do it, it’s Andy,” the Burnham backer adds.
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### Andy Burnham’s Prospects and Criticisms
The mayor’s fans argue that his path to power is narrow but possible; that he has the skills required to save the party from this existential crisis; and that only he has shown an understanding of how to veer the country away from national populism.
He has learned a lot about his own politics, allies say, through Hillsborough and the infected blood scandal. Crucially, MPs increasingly talk of him as the leader who could save their seat.
He has plenty of critics, of course. “He should’ve thought about this in 2016 when he walked away from the battlefield,” says one MP. “The electorate might have a different idea—especially if he wants to be PM, not just a hard-working local MP.”
They add: “It’s not very complimentary to the 400 of us already here that not a single one of us could outrank him. Third time lucky, he might get the leadership. But running the country is a bit harder than running a combined authority.”
“It’s ridiculous,” says another Labour insider. This criticism intensified after Burnham was seen to have set out his pitch a little obviously for the leadership with multiple pre-conference interviews.
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### Miliband, the Soft Left, and Party Dynamics
The *Mail on Sunday* and *Sun on Sunday* have reported that Ed Miliband fancies his chances too. Starmer’s attempt to shuffle him out of his Energy Secretary role will have hurt, but his team dismiss the idea he would like another tilt at the leadership as nonsense.
Soft left sources generally believe this is troublemaking, designed to drive a wedge between him and Starmer. But it is worth noting he has ignored the instruction to back Phillipson, endorsing Powell instead.
There are concerns among some leadership sceptics that Burnham is leaning too heavily to the left for broad appeal. They point to his decision to join a panel event at conference with Nadia Whittome, Rachael Maskell, and Clive Lewis.
“That the whip shouldn’t be taken off Maskell isn’t a basis for a premiership,” a source complains. “He needs grandees. If the focus is on maximising appeal to members, you’re going to box yourself into stuff that won’t help with running the country.”
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### The Plot Thickens: Blue Labour and Internal Strife
The only internal group actively working to keep Starmer in No 10 presently is Blue Labour.
“Now is not the time for infantile leftism,” Labour peer Maurice Glasman tells *The House* when asked about a change of leadership.
But even this backing for the PM is hardly a genuine vote of confidence: it can be explained by the fact that Blue Labour-aligned McSweeney is still in place; and because it is widely agreed that the timing is not yet right for their actual preference, Shabana Mahmood, who must for now tackle the impossibly hard job of Home Secretary.
Most worrying of all for Starmer is that, although the Labour right was wounded by the Mandelson scandal, plotting has escalated and for some, the need to get on board the Wes train is becoming urgent.
“There is a strain of thought that, if the big change is going to happen, there is a small window of opportunity before there is a by-election around Greater Manchester,” says an influential frontbencher. “There are some discussions about, ‘We need to do this soon—we can’t wait until we crash and burn in the locals then move on.’ There is a school of thought that says if we leave it that late, we’re screwed.”
How would a move be made before May? “It would be very difficult. You’ve got to get a majority of Cabinet members over the line to make that approach.”
This is not inevitable. It could be that competing claims and campaigns cancel each other out—and as often happens in the Labour Party, stasis reigns—so we go into local elections without any change, the same source acknowledges.
“But talk of the men in grey suits arriving for Starmer as they did for Theresa May is significant at this level.”
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### The Future of McSweeney and the Administration
Meanwhile, Labour insiders are divided over whether the end of McSweeney is nigh. Some contend that Starmer was never the endgame for McSweeney, who is close to Streeting’s allies.
Others believe the Tom Baldwin coup—the push to move Starmer away from McSweeneyism towards a more progressive position—has been called, after the Starmer biographer who got the PM to disavow his “island of strangers” rhetoric, is happening in slow motion.
“I don’t see much difference between the end of Morgan and the end of the administration. Move Jonathan Powell to chief of staff? Another reset? They’re too tied together,” says an insider. “The PM still completely relies on Morgan. He’ll be a very powerful man until the day he’s not.”
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Keir Starmer’s leadership is at a crossroads. With multiple internal and external pressures mounting, the coming months could define the future direction of the Labour Party and his role within it.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/starmer-survive-enemies-circling-last-defence