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McSweeney says he takes ‘full responsibility’ for advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson
We can now bring you Morgan McSweeney’s resignation letter in full:
After careful reflection, I have decided to resign from the government.
The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself.
When asked, I advised the prime minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice. In public life responsibility must be owned when it matters most, not just when it is most convenient. In the circumstances, the only honourable course is to step aside.
This has not been an easy decision. Much has been written and said about me over the years but my motivations have always been simple: I have worked every day to elect and support a government that puts the lives of ordinary people first and leads us to a better future for our great country. Only a Labour government will do that. I leave with pride in all we have achieved mixed with regret at the circumstances of my departure. But I have always believed there are moments when you must accept your responsibility and step aside for the bigger cause.
As I leave I have two further reflections: Firstly, and most importantly, we must remember the women and girls whose lives were ruined by Jeffrey Epstein and whose voices went unheard for far too long.
Secondly, while I did not oversee the due diligence and vetting process, I believe that process must now be fundamentally overhauled. This cannot simply be a gesture but a safeguard for the future.
I remain fully supportive of the prime minister. He is working every day to rebuild trust, restore standards and serve the country. I will continue to back that mission in whatever way I can. It has been the honour of my life to serve.
Key events
Starmer is a ‘lame duck leader’ who should follow McSweeney ‘out the door’, SNP says
Reacting to the McSweeney resignation, SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said:
Whenever Keir Starmer makes a catastrophic error of judgement, someone else is always forced to carry the can.
It won’t wash with voters this time. Advisers only advise. It was Keir Starmer who showed appalling personal judgement in appointing Peter Mandelson, despite knowing about his links to Jeffrey Epstein. This is entirely on him.
Keir Starmer’s time in office has been beset by a constant stream of bad judgements, broken promises, scandals and failure. Voters have lost confidence in him and want him to go.
With his own MPs calling for him to quit, Starmer is a lame duck leader. He should take personal responsibility and follow Morgan McSweeney out the door before he does any more damage.
It was an honour working with McSweeney, Starmer says after loss of key strategist
Reacting to his chief of staff’s departure, Keir Starmer said in a statement:
It’s been an honour working with Morgan McSweeney for many years. He turned our party around after one of its worst ever defeats and played a central role running our election campaign.
It is largely thanks to his dedication, loyalty and leadership that we won a landslide majority and have the chance to change the country.
Having worked closely with Morgan in opposition and in government, I have seen every day his commitment to the Labour Party and to our country. Our party and I owe him a debt of gratitude, and I thank him for his service.
Badenoch says Starmer should ‘take responsibility for his own terrible decisions’ after McSweeney resignation
In response to news of McSweeney resigning as the prime minister’s chief of staff, the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Starmer should also “take responsibility” for his actions. In a post on X, Badenoch wrote:
It’s about time. But once again with this PM it’s somebody else’s fault: ‘Mandelson lied to me’ or ‘Morgan advised me’.
Keir Starmer has to take responsibility for his own terrible decisions. But he never does.
Downing Street said as recently as Thursday that Morgan McSweeney retained the prime minister’s confidence.
No 10 may hope McSweeney’s resignation takes some of the pressure of Keir Starmer, but now questions will be raised about the prime minister’s ability to go on without his key strategist as concerns over Starmer’s judgment and authority continue to swirl.
McSweeney says he takes ‘full responsibility’ for advising Starmer to appoint Mandelson
We can now bring you Morgan McSweeney’s resignation letter in full:
After careful reflection, I have decided to resign from the government.
The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself.
When asked, I advised the prime minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice. In public life responsibility must be owned when it matters most, not just when it is most convenient. In the circumstances, the only honourable course is to step aside.
This has not been an easy decision. Much has been written and said about me over the years but my motivations have always been simple: I have worked every day to elect and support a government that puts the lives of ordinary people first and leads us to a better future for our great country. Only a Labour government will do that. I leave with pride in all we have achieved mixed with regret at the circumstances of my departure. But I have always believed there are moments when you must accept your responsibility and step aside for the bigger cause.
As I leave I have two further reflections: Firstly, and most importantly, we must remember the women and girls whose lives were ruined by Jeffrey Epstein and whose voices went unheard for far too long.
Secondly, while I did not oversee the due diligence and vetting process, I believe that process must now be fundamentally overhauled. This cannot simply be a gesture but a safeguard for the future.
I remain fully supportive of the prime minister. He is working every day to rebuild trust, restore standards and serve the country. I will continue to back that mission in whatever way I can. It has been the honour of my life to serve.
Peter Walker
My colleague Peter Walker has some background on Morgan McSweeney, who is reported to have pushed for Peter Mandelson’s recruitment into the US ambassador role last year. Here is an extract from his report:
McSweeney masterminded Starmer’s path to Downing Street less than five years after Jeremy Corbyn’s devastating defeat in the 2019 election …
McSweeney’s departure follows the recent loss of two other aides who were also particularly close to Starmer, his director of political strategy Paul Ovenden and his communications head Steph Driver.
But the loss of McSweeney, who began his career trying to oust the hard left from Labour in Lambeth, south London, is particularly emblematic given his pivotal role in the Starmer project and the transformation of Labour in the lead-up to the 2024 election.
Despite his success in guiding Labour to a huge majority, McSweeney had critics within the party, and particularly among MPs, a number of whom complained he presided over an unnecessarily factional, petty and cliquey Downing Street operation.
Morgan McSweeney quits as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff
Morgan McSweeney has resigned from his role of chief of staff to the prime minister.
BREAKING: Morgan McSweeney quits as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff amid fall-out from the Mandelson scandal
— Pippa Crerar (@PippaCrerar) February 8, 2026
The government has announced reforms to apprenticeships aimed at helping more young people to take up training placements for skilled jobs.
In a press release published yesterday, the department for works and pensions (DWP) said:
Whether it’s new safety standards on building sites or the skills needed to construct and operate the latest offshore wind turbines, apprenticeships need to keep pace.
A new accelerated approach will mean updates to training or development of new short courses can be completed in as little as three months, ensuring the workforce is ready to deliver the major projects that will drive growth.
This forms as part of the Growth and Skills Levy reforms, delivering 50,000 more apprenticeships for young people backed by £725 million funding. These measures will play an integral role towards the government’s ambition to get two-thirds of young people into higher-level learning or apprenticeships.
Youth unemployment is high, owing in part to the continued impact of Covid and the cost of living crisis.
The reality for many young people is that they are applying for jobs alongside hundreds of applicants, for low-paying entry-level positions that ask for years of experience.
Bosses are prioritising automation through AI to plug skills gaps and allow them to reduce headcount, instead of training up junior members of staff, a report by the British Standards Institution (BSI) found. Labour has not acknowledged this reality in the DWP press release.
While the fallout of the release of the Epstein files has dominated UK politics for the last week, in France, the aftershock is also being felt.
My colleague Angelique Chrisafis reports on a veteran French politician quitting as head of prestigious institute after Epstein links revealed.
Jack Lang, a former French culture minister, has resigned as head of Paris’s prestigious Arab World Institute after revelations of his past contacts with the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the launch of a financial investigation by French prosecutors.
Lang, 86, resigned on Saturday night before he was due to attend an urgent meeting called by the French foreign ministry to discuss his links to Epstein. You can read more here:
Plaid Cymru leader Rhun ap Iorwerth refused to set out a timeline for a Welsh independence referendum.
He told Laura Kuenssberg earlier today that he wanted a referendum “as soon as the people of Wales are ready for it”.
The party, which stands for Welsh independence, won the Caerphilly byelection in November, beating the Reform candidate, who came in second.
Now, ap Iorwerth hopes he will become leader of the Welsh Senedd.
In case you missed our exclusive story yesterday, The Liberal Democrats have urged the UK’s financial regulator to immediately investigate Peter Mandelson, saying his apparent decision to leak highly confidential government information to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein may have led to insider trading.
You can read more here:
Cross-party pressure is mounting around the scandal. We reported earlier Conservative shadow minister Alex Burghart was asked if he had any sympathy with Starmer, who said he was lied to when appointing Mandelson as US ambassador.
Josh Halliday
As Nigel Farage cut the ribbon on Reform UK’s byelection headquarters in Greater Manchester this week, Labour’s candidate, Angeliki Stogia, sat tearfully in a cafe nearby.
Politicians do not often show their emotion but for Stogia, who arrived in Britain as a student from Greece in 1995, this is personal. “I am angry,” she said of Farage’s party. “I am very, very angry. How dare they come here and spread this division?”
Her voice breaking, she added: “For them, this is a show. For me, this is my community. This is my people.”
Westminster byelections are often bruising affairs but the battle for Gorton and Denton is one of the most unpredictable contests, with the highest stakes, in years. Labour is fighting both Reform UK and the Green party to cling on to its 13,000-vote majority after the retirement last month of Andrew Gwynne, who stepped down after the “vile” Trigger Me Timbers WhatsApp scandal.
Starmer’s government is engulfed in crisis over Peter Mandelson’s links to Jeffrey Epstein, and defeat on 26 February is likely to prompt further calls for the prime minister to quit. You can read more here:
Peter Walker
Peter Walker is senior political correspondent for the Guardian
Reform UK’s flagship council has been accused of telling a “blatant lie” after its claim of nearly £40m in savings on net zero was found to be based on hypothetical projects for which there was no documentation.
Kent county council, which has a £2.5bn annual budget, is one of 10 where Nigel Farage’s party has outright control and is seen as a test case for whether the insurgent party can govern competently.
Soon after being elected, the council leader, Linden Kemkaran, promised the party’s “department of local government efficiency”, or Dolge, would bring a “laser-like focus on getting value for money”.
The council’s leadership claimed it had found £100m in savings, £39.5m of which come from what it said was two net zero-related projects: £32m by scrapping a programme to make properties more environmentally friendly, and £7.5m by not making the council’s fleet of vehicles electric by 2030.
After Kemkaran announced these at a council meeting last July, Polly Billington, a Labour MP in Kent, requested details of the apparent savings via a freedom of information request, setting off a months-long battle with the council. You can read more here:
Former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown has said the government needs to introduce an “anti-corruption commission” to “root out any criminality in UK political life”.
In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Brown wrote:
We need an independent anti-corruption commission to be appointed by parliament, with the commissioner given the remit and power in law, as our review promised, to root out any criminality in UK political life by detecting and punishing it wherever and whenever it occurs.
And to remove all doubt as to our determination, parliament should be quite specific in naming “corruption” a new statutory offence, as the Law Commission has proposed and Transparency International has sought in the public office (accountability) bill going through parliament.
The anti-corruption champion, Margaret Hodge, has done her best with a limited remit, but the commissioner should have statutory powers of search and seizure and access to bank records, and all public bodies should be required to fully cooperate. Australia has led the way in introducing such an agency and that can be a blueprint for rapid reform.
Peter Mandelson was business secretary during Gordon Brown’s premiership, when he appears to have leaked an economic briefing to Jeffrey Epstein, who was serving a jail sentence at the time for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Lammy warned Starmer against appointing Mandelson as US ambassador – report
The deputy prime minister, David Lammy, warned Keir Starmer not to appoint Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to Washington because of his links to the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the Telegraph is reporting.
Lammy, who was the foreign secretary at the time, had backed extending the term of Karen Pierce as ambassador as she was viewed as being well-connected within the Trump administration’s team, according to the Telegraph, which has based its reporting on conversations with Lammy’s friends with knowledge on the subject.
The disclosure comes as it also emerged in a report by the Times that Angela Rayner had told friends that she warned Starmer not to appoint Mandelson as ambassador to the US last February.
The Times has been told that Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, privately warned Starmer that bringing Mandelson back into government would be an error as public evidence showed Mandelson and Epstein had maintained a close friendship despite Epstein’s conviction for child sex offences in 2008.
But Starmer is reported to have ignored Rayner’s advice and believed Mandelson’s claim that he “barely knew” Epstein.
The Guardian’s policy editor, Kiran Stacey, has a full report on the growing pressure on Peter Mandelson to hand back his US ambassador payout and the impact the scandal is having on Keir Starmer’s crumbling premiership:
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