Coffee House Shots: McSweeney resigns – is Starmer next?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.3 • 826 Ratings
🗓️ 9 February 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
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Summary
Morgan McSweeney resigned yesterday as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff and – while it was not a surprise, given his role in appointing Peter Mandelson – the news that the Prime Minister has now lost his closest aide and political fire blanket is a huge shock. The repercussions are numerous: Starmer loses the man widely regarded to have won him his large majority and someone who was popular in No. 10; he has recruited two new deputies to fulfil a role considered insurmountable for one person; and it sets a precedent that anyone who allowed Mandelson to become US ambassador is liable for the chop.
For a Prime Minister without a political philosophy, McSweeney was the man with the plan – where does Labour go from here? Is this the end for Starmer – and who might replace him?
Tim Shipman and James Heale discuss.
Produced by Megan McElroy and Oscar Edmondson.
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Transcript
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| 0:35.2 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House. I'm Tim Shipman. I'm James Hill. And today we are going to be talking about Morgan McSweeney's resignation from number 10 and frankly not much else. Can Kirstehr Stama survive and who might replace him? |
| 0:47.7 | Tim, the only news of the day is Morgan McSweeney is out as number 10 chief staff. Was it a shock or a surprise? |
| 0:53.2 | I think that's always the great distinction in politics. It wasn't a surprise, but it's always |
| 0:57.3 | still a shock when these big things happen. So people have been muttering for weeks about |
| 1:01.5 | Morgan Musco, Morgan must go, half the Labour Party in the House of Commons seemed to want |
| 1:05.8 | that. And it always seemed very likely that Starmer would at some point have to sacrifice him, |
| 1:11.5 | or he would decide that he should go to save Stama, |
| 1:15.6 | or that he might go because he's just had enough of bleating Labour MPs, |
| 1:19.5 | moaning on about him wanting to align Labour with the views of the electorate |
| 1:24.3 | rather than the views of the Left of the Labour Party. |
| 1:26.5 | And I think ultimately it was probably a combination of all those things. |
| 1:29.3 | There were multiple conversations on Friday between McSweeney and Stama. |
| 1:34.0 | Reports of meetings that McSweeney wasn't in as well, where this was clearly being war-gamed. |
| 1:40.6 | And then finally a conversation on Sunday where sort of around about lunchtime |
| 1:46.9 | where they kind of mutually agreed and I think I think they probably did mutually agree but |
| 1:51.6 | that didn't mean that it was particularly happy I don't think there were a lot of a lot of people |
... |
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