I have a soft spot for gingers. As a left winger, I root for the underdog. Morgan McSweeney should be relieved that rumors that he used the “f” word to rush Foreign Office officials to vet Peter Mandelson have been dismissed this morning by Philip Barton.
Without a hint of irony, Labour’s darkest Machiavelli confides to the committee: “it has caused me a lot of stress for a few months now, I don’t know why people do this in politics, they spread false rumours. They call a lot of reporters, and those reporters then call politicians. That’s how rumors go. It’s very abrasive. It damages people’s reputations; many people in number 10 understand this and it is unfair to the staff. I am grateful to the journalists who did not cover this.”
Entire books have been published about how McSweeney did just that to his political enemies. Does his newfound lived experience mean he now regrets any role he may or may not have had in destroying the careers, reputations and mental health of staff members in Jeremy Corbyn’s office when Corbyn was leader of the Labor Party, or does having the wrong policy mean you’re fair game for character assassinations based on rumours?
In the Labor Headquarters, I am told, the atmosphere is funeral. Every television is showing McSweeney, a hero to many employees, being interrogated by Emily Thornberry. She is chair of the Foreign Affairs select committee and one of the women who most objectively embodies the character traits that the party and the country lacked in the man McSweeney chose to lead us. charm, charisma, the joy of living. A working sense of who she is and what she believes.
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Allies of Thornberry say McSweeney met with her during the 2020 leadership election. Her political profile was similar to that of Keir Starmer at the time, perhaps her biggest. Both were Europhile lawyers who remained in Corbyn’s cabinet. But something about Thornberry triggered McSweeney, those allies claim. He couldn’t believe her. She was a star, and he was looking for loyal soldiers: fodder for the next cannon. No matter how much she tried to signal discipline, his opinion never changed.
Even when, after the October 7 massacre, she betrayed her deepest values to maintain the drowned No. 10 line that “Israel has the right to defend itself.” The specter of the “man in the white van” story of 2014 was still over him when Ed Miliband, then leader, panicked and fired him instead, lest he appear less flag-loving than his New Labor legacy spinners instructed. And so, in what was likely to be her last chance to become a minister in a Labor government, Emily Thornberry was once again left without a paragraph from men who don’t think they can control her. She ran for president of the select committee on Foreign Affairs and here we are now.
McSweeney is wearing a working man’s uniform. Blue polyester suit. Burgundy tie. White shirt. He looks young and small, even though he is 49. Some men grow slowly. He began his testimony with an acknowledgment of the women and girls harmed by Jeffrey Epstein, and with that after him, he continued to ignore them.
“Wasn’t Mandelson a reliable indispensable man for you?” Thornberry says. McSweeney says he was 44 at the time he sought his advice. I don’t need mentors, thank you very much. They brought in some extremely experienced people, like Liz Lloyd and Jonathan Powell. He politely declines New statesman reported a quote from February about him “not even taking a breath without first asking Mandelson”.
This is not a Mandelson security clearance hearing. It is a hearing about whether Peter Mandelson was the man behind Morgan McSweeney, given that Westminster has long established that Morgan McSweeney was the man behind Keir Starmer.
Thornberry casts McSweeney’s mind back to happier times. The turn of the millennium, 2001, when he was an intern at Excalibur, the New Labour’s assault unit. “One of his functions was to keep an eye on MPs who were seen as disloyal.” What she means is, who taught you to be ruthless with people in your party? When did the cancer of Labor factionalism and obsession with staying on message first arise?
A few months ago, outside a pub in Westminster, I learned the story of Thornberry’s most fatal political moment. I met the man, a Ukip spin doctor, who framed her taking pictures from her apartment post with St George’s flags and sent it to the right-wing tabloids: “The first Labor banker to mock the English working class”. It was a very successful work. But he told me that he now realized that the punishment did not fit the crime. Almost a decade later, his mother died. Blinded by grief, he went to a small chapel inside Westminster Abbey, lit a candle and posted a photo of the moment. Thornberry, who had never met her, texted her: “A year ago my mom died and I went to the same church. I hope you’re doing well x.” This is a man the average Labor politician would never want to be seen associating with. But Thornberry treating her like a human made her realize that she wasn’t the smug caricature he had created of her.
McSweeney denies the claim that Mandelson was given access to a secret, off-the-books Google spreadsheet listing potential parliamentary candidates. Any Labor insider worth their salt will tell you that spreadsheets are a tried and tested method for labor puppet masters. (And who can forget the Tories’ equivalent document, allegedly the brainchild of Grant Shapps?) “We did everything on the books,” McSweeney assures us. By books, he apparently refers to the four volumes written with direct testimony from himself and his allies about how the entire Starmer leadership project was an off-the-books secret operation.
Of course, it was Starmer who decided to appoint Mandelson. There is no record of the decision or deliberations that led to Mandelson not even being a suggestion to the US ambassador (it was Mandelson himself who put Mandelson, McSweeney claims) on the preferred appointment. Despite Trump’s people telling McSweeney they were happy with the previous ambassador.
As for Matthew Doyle, his time at No.10 was coming to an end, so the search began for suitable alternative roles – positions for which, McSweeney claims, he would have to apply like everyone else. That’s not what Olly Robbins told the committee a week ago when he said Doyle would have been one POLITICAL appointment and would therefore be expected to be appointed without delay, as was Mandelson. Doyle wasn’t interested anyway, so nothing progressed.
Except for his peers.
McSweeney describes it as “a duty of care to someone who is leaving”. Have you heard of the phrase “boys’ job,” asks Thornberry, who apparently received no such care package when she was replaced by Starmer’s close personal friend Richard Hermer.
“It’s the opposite of working for boys, he was losing his job!” says McSweeney. “Don’t you think that’s a little strange, a little embarrassing?” she asks him. “Well, we told the old women the same thing,” he replies. “Like Sue Grey, what job was she given, for example?” Thornberry says.
McSweeney is 49 years old. Like Mandelson, he has plenty of time to seek redemption. Emily Thornberry showed compassion and grace to a Ukip spin doctor who tried to destroy her. Has McSweeney learned anything from his paranoia and arrogance? Can he see that his fear of scrutiny has scorned his colleagues to the point where Starmer now leads the Labor Party he deserves: slanderous, timid and insincere?
Did people love McSweeney, or were they afraid of him? Was he a political genius who got the Labor Party government ready, or was he just supposedly able to connect his political allies with donors and beat up his political enemies with the press?
I, for one, believe Morgan McSweeney. Peter Mandelson did not check it. The Irishman has no one to blame but himself.
(Further reading: Inside the Mandelson Affair)
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