After Sue Gray's dramatic resignation as Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff, Max Stafford assesses the qualities her successor, Morgan McSweeney, will bring to the role and asks whether the appointment of a political street-fighter will help get Number 10 back on track.
On Sunday, I took a day off. So, it was inevitable that that would be the day that Sue Gray resigned. For weeks, speculation about Gray’s future had been growing, with Starmer seemingly failing to respond to increasing calls for him to get a grip of his still-new Downing Street operation. But, in a pattern that others have noted regarding his response to internal crises, Starmer went suddenly from a long procrastination to ruthless execution of the solution. The result is the demotion (basically forced departure) of a Chief-of-Staff who has been described as an ultimate Whitehall insider, and promotion of the person who has been at the heart of the PM’s operation since before he became Labour Party leader in 2020. Exit Sue Gray, enter Morgan McSweeney.
Starmer’s government operation seemed to have gone from the “bright glad morning” of July’s election win to the kind of crises, malaise and hostile internal briefings that you’d associate with a government experiencing the doldrums after several years in office. Even Boris Johnson, who went through three different Downing Street set-ups and friction between his staff, got through half a year before similar internal tensions became evident. I recently wrote about how Gray was now becoming the story. At the time, I credited this to the fact that the Chief-of-Staff’s role is becoming scrutinised in a considerably public way as it becomes an ever-more established part of the centre of government. However, this was compounded by reports of disagreements between her and McSweeney. Subsequent further briefing about Gray’s salary, as well as criticism of her for Downing Street failing to stem ongoing stories about donations of clothes to Starmer, indicate that the rifts were deeper and more intransigent than previously thought.
What ultimately seems to have sealed Gray’s fate as Chief-of-Staff, though, is that she fell foul of one of Whitehall’s most fundamental rules for special advisers – do not become the story. To be clear, this is not a point at odds with my contention that the role of Chief is inevitably getting more public scrutiny. By “do not become the story”, I mean that advisers should not attract negative publicity. In 2018, I wrote more fully about the importance of this. You should be the facilitator of your political principal’s wishes and voice, but you should never take away from that by stealing the media’s attention. Previous examples of this rule being broken include Dominic Cummings’ Barnard Castle trip in 2020.
In my ongoing series of research interviews with those who’ve interacted with previous Chiefs, I regularly ask interviewees about whether PM’s and Chiefs shape each other’s leadership and performance. Every single interviewee has not only affirmed that this is the case but also that they feel that it is inevitable, given the close working nature of the relationship.
Partly this is due to the need to be able to inhabit the same mental space (in other words, the ability of the Chief to speak on behalf of the PM and have others trust that they are accurately representing their thinking). This isn’t merely an aspect of being a political chief-of-staff – it was a common aspect of the role of a chief in business or the military mentioned by participants at a recent Chief of Staff Association event that I attended.
This relies upon a more fundamental part of the aforementioned closeness – the need for significant trust. To return to the political sphere, a leader must trust their chief to not only be able to know their mind but also to avoid doing anything that draws attention away from them. As one interviewee, a former senior adviser in Johnson’s Downing Street, told me, ‘I think a key thing is that you should not be the story. You are there, at the end of the day, to advise and to make sure that the advice is as good as it can be.’ It’s not possible, at this point, to know if Starmer had lost trust in Gray personally. However, reports that he was prepared to sack her if she did not accept the demotion she was ultimately given indicate that he recognised the unsustainability of her position as his most senior adviser.
So, in light of this, what lessons can be learnt from Sue Gray’s departure? First, that changing the Chief-of-Staff won’t be enough of a “reset moment”. Frankly, a government only just approaching the 100-day mark shouldn’t be having even to consider a reset. The fact that they are means that this is a government with a considerable need to get a grip on many key fronts. These include personnel management, staff motivation (with many special advisers currently angry about their pay arrangements), strategic communications, discipline in regards to briefing against colleagues, and much else besides. Even the strongest or most successful of chiefs won’t be able to grip all of that, and certainly not all at once, so building a more coherent and disciplined Downing Street team will be essential to enabling Gray’s successor to share the load. Acknowledgement of this was tacitly indicated by the fact that McSweeney’s appointment was accompanied by those of two Deputy Chiefs-of-Staff, a Principal Private Secretary (long overdue), and a new head of communications.
But this does beg a further question - who is Morgan McSweeney and why did Starmer pick him? McSweeney has been with Starmer since the beginning of his leadership. Indeed, as revealed by Tom Baldwin in his recent biography of the Labour leader, McSweeney was central to Starmer choosing to fight for the party leadership. A founder and former director of Labour Together, a Starmer-supporting campaign group, McSweeney was the national campaign director for Labour’s general election win. Between that and his new posting as Chief-of-Staff, he was the director of political strategy in Downing Street (in short, continuing to be a large part of Starmer’s political brain). Like many in the new Labour administration, McSweeney has little prior experience of Whitehall and the inner government machinery. He has, however, been embedded in Labour campaigning circles for some time, having run Liz Kendall’s doomed leadership bid almost a decade ago.
Here, then, is someone who has a hard political brain and a close existing relationship with Starmer. Whilst Gray’s political experience was rooted in Whitehall, McSweeney’s is founded upon the raw realities of party management and campaigning. He can almost certainly claim to meet the “shared brain/master’s voice” requirement discussed earlier and is undoubtedly trusted by Starmer.
All of this raises a final aside about Starmer’s own leadership. Much has been made, since Sunday, of the PM’s ruthlessness in ousting Gray and bringing in McSweeney. As was discussed in an Institute for Government webinar on Tuesday, it wasn’t Gray’s removal that was surprising (given recent travails) but, rather, the speed with which she was replaced. Others have also commented that this seems to reflect a pattern with the PM, including from his time leading the Opposition, of prevaricating over a decision and then suddenly ruthlessly implementing a solution. His previous experiences with reshuffles in November 2021 and September 2023 are a case-in-point. In this most recent example of the pattern, the fact that two factions (Gray and McSweeney supporters) seem to have been at war with each other is nothing new. Many PMs have faced similar situations in their operations (none more so than under Johnson). This factional nature of Downing Street politics reflects the reality that the PM’s office is, at its heart, a court. Nevertheless, the fact that Starmer was pushed into such a corner that the relevant factions forced him to show the leadership required to resolve it (rather than gripping it earlier and, in so doing, perhaps having avoided the events of recent weeks) does not speak of confidence in his own direction of his team.
It's too early to say what all of this means for the role of Downing Street Chief-of-Staff. On paper, Gray should have been one of the most experienced and self-assured holders of the post. I expected her to show the same benefits of prior official experience that Jonathan Powell (1997-2007) and Ed Llewellyn (2010-2016) showed in the role. Clearly, the two books that I’m currently writing on the role and its holders will have to consider the Gray tenure in quite a different light. However, it seems likely that Starmer has now chosen to orientate the role away from prior experiences of Whitehall to a much harder political focus.
The Prime Minister has swapped a Whitehall insider for a street-fighter. We wait to see if it means a more cohesive and effective operation.
Dr Max Stafford is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Mile End Institute and a Fellow of Advance HE. He is currently writing a book examining mayors as political leaders, and another examining the changing role of the Downing Street Chief of Staff.