He walks! He talks! He breathes! For most people, Morgan McSweeney is a quasi-mythical creature. A being that exists almost entirely in the shadows. If at all. Away from the public gaze. The legendary slayer of the Labour left, rumoured to have been shaped in the dark arts by Peter Mandelson, who went on to become the eyes and ears of the prime minister. Possibly even his brain. It was often said the only ideas Keir ever had were ones he had been force-fed by Morgan the Mighty.
But on Tuesday morning, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff was forced out into the open, summoned to Westminster to give evidence to the foreign affairs select committee about the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. McSweeney looked far from happy at the exposure. Head down, no eye contact with the public as he sped down the corridor. Maybe he was worried about being out and about in daylight. The darkness has been kind to his skincare regime. He looks far younger than his 49 years.
His nerves were evident. For someone who has reportedly left many bodies in his wake, he was surprisingly diffident. For his opening statement about remembering the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and apologising for his lapse in judgement in recommending Mandy, Morgan kept his arms tightly crossed. As if worried they might make a break for the doors if left unguarded. His left eye occasionally twitched. His voice, a generic middle-class Irish accent with a hint of Cork and Scots, rarely raised much beyond a whisper. He could start a second career as newsreader for RTÉ.
The opening exchanges between the committee chair, Emily Thornberry, and McSweeney were unadulterated poison. The pair have history. Not to put too fine a point on it, they hate each other. Even when they are on their best behaviour, the mutual dislike is a darkness visible. Emily is part of the Labour leftwing Islington aristocracy. Everything that Morgan despises. It was on his recommendation that Thornberry was not given the cabinet post of attorney general after the 2024 election. Emily had been waiting two years for her revenge. She was determined to take her time. This was her idea of fun.
For 15 minutes, she probed away, trying to establish that McSweeeney was nothing but a Mini-Mandy. Someone who would have always been a nobody had not Mandelson adopted him as his protege. A pet without a mind of his own. Just someone desperate to please.
So when Starmer decided to make the Washington job a political appointment, Morgan had no hesitation in doing his reputed political daddy a favour. McSweeney was horrified. He hardly knew Mandelson. Peter who? In fact, he wasn’t even sure if he had the right Mandelson. Whether this was the same one he had been out to dinner with.
In any case, it had been Peter who had first suggested Peter to be ambassador. Of course it had. It made perfect sense. Classic Mandelson. Never shy about any schmoozing or self-promotion. He even wondered whether he could do it part time so he could also be chancellor of Oxford University. All that Morgan had done was suggest Mandelson would be better than the other two candidates. George Osborne and Bear Grylls. Not much of a choice there. Any of us would have been better than George or the Bearster. We didn’t get to find out whose bright idea it had been to put two duds on the selection panel. But it had all the hallmarks of a McSweeeney black op.
For the rest of the two and a half hour session, McSweeney more or less held the party line. At the very least, he didn’t land Keir in it. Though he did stretch belief a bit by suggesting that Starmer was in possession of free will and had acted independently of him at all time.
Nor could he quite explain away the original sin. Why – leaving aside questions of process and pressure – Morgan had thought it was OK to recommend a friend who was known mates with the world’s most notorious paedophile. I guess we’ve all been there. There’s mates and then there’s hanging out in flats of mates. Morgan said it had been “a knife to the heart” when he had discovered the depth of Mandy’s friendship with Epstein. Or, to the rest of us, Peter being Peter. Again. That’s his USP. Hiding in plain sight.
What McSweeney really wanted us to know that at heart he was just one of us. A decent bloke with a big heart doing a decent job. A man dedicated to public service. If he had a fault, it was that he was too trusting. Had just assumed if there had been really that much iffy about Mandelson, then it would have been picked up by direct vetting. After all, Morgan was all heart. That’s why he had recommended Matthew Doyle to be an ambassador. Because he had a duty of care after getting him the sack. It’s the way things roll in No 10.
Earlier in the morning, we had had Philip Barton, the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, the one who was sacked before Olly Robbins got sacked – keep up – in front of the same select committee. Philip was a collector’s item because he is a firm believer that Yes Minister is an audiovisual version of the civil service code.
Luckily for Starmer, Barton didn’t do any lasting damage to Downing Street’s insistence that the prime minister hadn’t misled parliament or pressurised the Foreign Office into expediting vetting, largely because Philip found it almost impossible to answer any direct question. He speaks fluent mandarin. A language only understood by senior officials in his own department. His family can’t understand a word he says.
By far his most interesting revelation was that a good permanent secretary would never make the mistake of telling their minister anything. Everything is on a need to know basis and only he needs to know. Never let a foreign secretary anywhere near classified information. You could be at war within hours. And you had to conclude Barton had a point. Imagine if Boris Johnson had been told anything.
That just left Kemi Badenoch to lead off the debate to refer Starmer to the privileges committee. As so often, she misread the crowd. The prime minister hasn’t misled parliament. It’s his judgment that’s the issue. But ploughed on regardless. Any Labour MP who voted against was probably a paedophile. “It’s definitely not a stunt,” she shouted. “It’s not a stunt.” Except it was. One that was bound to fail. For Kemi it was just a question of hoping to get some mud to stick.
