Backbenchers feel PM’s chief of staff missed strength of feeling over cuts – and there are deeper tensions at play
Being the prime minister’s right-hand man is a position of extraordinary power and privilege. But when things start to go wrong, you are directly in the line of fire. So has found Morgan McSweeney, the political mastermind credited with helping Keir Starmer win his election landslide, in recent days as the Labour party has collapsed into moral fury over planned welfare cuts.
The softly spoken Irishman, now Starmer’s chief of staff, has become the lightning rod for the frustration of many Labour rebels who backed a wrecking amendment designed to blow up the big welfare bill next week.
Many of them blame McSweeney and his political operation for ignoring Labour MPs to such an extent that they missed the strength of feeling over the disability benefit cuts and just how far the rebels were prepared to go.
“They just kept saying that MPs were in a different place from the public on benefit cuts and we’d just have to tough it out,” said one MP who signed the amendment. “But we speak to our constituents all the time and many of them are terrified. They just don’t get it.”
