McSweeney Says Labour Under-Prepared for 2024 Return but Defends Means-Testing Principle

Morgan McSweeney, who served as Sir Keir Starmer's chief of staff after Labour's 2024 election victory, said in his first media interview that the party had not prepared sufficiently for returning to government. The interview with BBC presenter Nick Robinson was published on 2 July 2026 on the podcast Political Thinking with Nick Robinson.

McSweeney resigned earlier in 2026 over his role in the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US.

He took the chief of staff position three months after Labour entered office, replacing Sue Gray. He stated that planning meetings early in 2024 revealed gaps in preparation. "We didn't prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to," McSweeney said.

He added that many in the party had expected to need at least two elections to return to power after the 2019 defeat. " He admitted that removing winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners had been a mistake that "defined the government in a way that did us a lot of damage," though he maintained that means-testing itself was not wrong and that the income threshold had simply been set too low.

He also said there was "no question" that an early row over freebies given to ministers by donors had damaged the party.

McSweeney said he found Donald Trump "much funnier than I expected him to be" during their first phone call. He described officials struggling to contain laughter at a joke the US president made about foxes and wind turbines. He also said he believed Andy Burnham was the right person to succeed Starmer as Labour leader and supported Burnham's proposal for a Downing Street unit in Manchester.