The Mysterious Advisor Who Pulled the Strings of the Labour Party and Brought Down Starmer

SadaNews - An article on the iPaper website addressed the figure of Morgan Mac Sweeney and his role in the rise of the British Labour Party and its subsequent decline in governance, offering a critical perspective that sees him as the hidden strategic mind behind Prime Minister Keir Starmer's political project, as well as being responsible for many of his successes and failures.

Patrick Cockburn argues in his article that Mac Sweeney, who served as Starmer's chief of staff from 2024 to 2026 before resigning, was not just a technical advisor but rather the force that shaped the party's direction before and after Starmer came to power, sometimes exceeding even the influence of the Prime Minister himself.

The article presents a central idea that what can be termed the "Mac Sweeney Project" formed the true framework for the Labour Party's governance, both in building power and in major political decisions.

The writer pointed out that doubts about the extent of Mac Sweeney's influence, despite his attempts to remain in the background and deny the notion that he was the "puppet master," remained strongly present in political and media discussions, supported by statements and internal leaks that described Starmer as more of a conduit for his strategic team’s directives than a fully independent leader.

The Party's Repositioning

The article highlights Mac Sweeney's role in managing conflicts within the Labour Party, especially after Jeremy Corbyn's defeat in 2019, when he led the process of reshaping the party and sidelining the left wing, as part of a project aimed at politically repositioning the party.

However, the writer believes that this skill in "factional wars" within the party did not successfully translate into managing national governance, but rather turned into a source of broader political turmoil.

The transition of the party to power revealed - according to the writer - the limits of this approach, as reliance on a strategy to redirect the party to the right and attempt to attract Conservative and Reform Party voters led to counterproductive results.

Instead of expanding the electoral base, this shift contributed to weakening ties with traditional Labour voter segments and pushed some of them to abstain from voting or switch to other parties such as the Greens and Liberal Democrats, negatively affecting subsequent results.

The article notes that the Labour Party's victory in the 2024 elections, although described as a major triumph, was in essence the result of the division of its opponents rather than a broad popular mandate, as the party received a limited percentage of votes despite the large number of seats.

A Victory That Did Not Last Long

The article clarifies that this victory did not last long, as the party witnessed a clear decline in the 2026 local council elections, losing a significant portion of its voters who were divided between abstaining from voting and switching to other parties.

The article criticized the political discourse accompanying this project, particularly the adoption of harsher stances on immigration, which the writer believes contributed to increasing political polarization instead of calming it, and weakened the party's ability to regain the trust of its traditional base, asserting that this direction failed to attract right-wing voters while simultaneously harming the party's image among its historical voters.

The article concluded that despite Mac Sweeney's success in building a strong organizational machine within the Labour Party and reshaping the internal balance of power in favor of Starmer's leadership, he failed to translate this organizational success into political stability at the state level.

The writer argues that this failure contributed to deepening the ongoing political crisis in Britain since its exit from the European Union, increasing instability and volatility in the party scene, making the "Mac Sweeney Project" an example of the limits of party strategies when they shift from internal struggle to actual governance.

Source: iPaper