Will Starmer's body count prove fatal for his premiership?

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0:33Tom Baldwin:This is a Global Player original podcast. There is a mutual loathing between Starmer and Mandelson. It is absolutely also true that McSweeney and Mandelson had a very, very close relationship. He was basically finding a job for his mate. Starmer wanted to keep Mandelson at arm's length. They'd all seen the diligence that came back in December saying, warning, warning, this guy is a risk, with their red flags waved. When you strip all of this away, this story is about something really constitutionally important, which is whether the Prime Minister tells the House of Commons the truth. The nature of the relationship that I understood he had with Epstein was not a close friendship.

1:11Tom Baldwin:How I understood it at the time was a passing acquaintance that he regretted having and that he apologised for. What has emerged since then was way, way, way worse than I had expected at the time. and it was when I saw the pictures, when I saw the Bloomberg questions in September 2025. I have to say it was like a knife through my soul. That is Morgan McSweeney, the former chief of staff to Keir Starmer and the man who until now has lived in the shadows, explaining why he got it so very badly wrong to support Peter Mandelson as Britain's ambassador to Washington. He's been called before a parliamentary committee to explain whether it was him that pushed that appointment through to get Peter Mandelson the job that he longed for.

2:04Tom Baldwin:Welcome to The News Agents.

2:13It's John.

2:14Tom Baldwin:It's Maitlis. It's Lewis. And today we heard from Morgan McSweeney, who was the chief of staff to Keir Starmer until he was fired, stroked, resigned over the Mandelson affair last year. And you'll remember this time a week ago, we were listening to Ollie Robbins, the most senior Foreign Office civil servant who had been summarily fired from his job on the Thursday night that Keir Starmer discovered that Mandelson hadn't in fact passed the vetting process in the way that he had understood. Olly Robbins essentially took the floor and pretty much threw Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, under the bus in a way only a senior civil servant can.

3:01Tom Baldwin:And today we were listening to Emily Thornberry and her parliamentary committee interrogate Morgan McSweeney and ask him questions as to whether essentially it had been his friendship, his loyalty to Peter Mandelson that had made him push through an old mate for a job to which he really should never have been appointed. I think one of the most remarkable things about today, I mean, the story is is continues to sort of cascade and have lots of different elements that are worth interrogating. But one of the really notable things is that we're hearing from Morgan McSweeney at all. I mean, this is a man who has in one form or another orbited around or been in latter years absolutely central to Labour politics.

3:49Tom Baldwin:I mean, again, just to remind people in so many ways, Morgan McSweeney and Keir Starmer, they have been inseparable in so many ways. it was not Keir Starmer who chose Morgan McSweeney to be his chief of staff, which would be a more normal arrangement. In so many ways, it was Morgan McSweeney as the head of Labour together who chose Keir Starmer to be their man to defeat Corbynism within the party. He is an absolutely central figure within Labour politics. But until today, he has barely ever been seen or on camera or given an interview or anything like that. Most people wouldn't know his voice.

4:22Tom Baldwin:Exactly. I mean, there have been people, I know people from our old world of TV news who, in all the years, they've been trying to find, when he left Downing Street, just a clip, something, anything, just to try and bring the guy to life a bit. There's one shot of him at the back of a hall, when Keir Starbours make his speech, which is shown every single time. I think there was an interview of him in 2006, embarking, helping Margaret Hodge there, when he was helping her defeat the BMP. This is how shadowy and elusive and even ghostly this guy is. But he has been central. He's now been speaking for hours at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

5:00Tom Baldwin:And you can also see, I mean, I have this sort of theory really in a way, you know, you know how kind of dog owners and dogs often come to resemble each other. I always think this is often the case with spads and their ministers. Right. They often have a lot of the same kind of characteristics. And you can see there in Morgan McSweeney, you can see in his appearance and performance today how he would be so associated with Keir Starmer. He likewise is a quite gentle, quite a mild mannered, quiet guy who is not someone who sort of hogs the limelight or attention. And what he also is, you can still see, is deeply loyal to his former master because he has done nothing today that in any way undermines anything that Keir Starmer has previously said.

5:47Tom Baldwin:It is absolutely clear that he continues to see ultimately his political fate and the prime minister as being intertwined. I think what was so interesting about his evidence today was to listen to him talking about his relationship with Peter Mandelson, where he says, no, he wasn't. I was a grown man. I was in my 40s. You know, he wasn't my mentor. I wasn't in kind of hock to him. I wasn't doing what he asked. Peter Mandelson, you got the impression, was someone who was such a self-publicist about anything and everything he does that he was kind of busy advancing himself. Whose idea was it that Peter Mandelson should be the next ambassador?

6:24Tom Baldwin:It was Peter Mandelson's idea that he should be the next ambassador. Whose idea was it that he should be the Chancellor of Oxford University? It was Peter Mandelson's idea. Always referred to as Mandelson as well. Yeah. Not Peter or Peter Mandelson. Yeah. Just Mandelson. Well, I mean, so many of these relationships have fractured over all of this that, you know, Peter's friends are have gone to the hills and there aren't many left who are sort of standing by him right now. And I just thought that was very interesting as well. The extent to which, you know, there were other people who Morgan McSwindy said he spoke to, two of whom I've known for a very long time.

6:59Tom Baldwin:And over the 20, 30 years I've known these people, they've never spoken about politics, gossiped. They don't want to do that. And those are the sort of people who stay in the shadows. And so the idea that it was just Peter Mandelson, this Svengali figure of Peter Mandelson's own creation that was that was so important is actually probably, I thought, very convincingly put, you know, dispelled by McSweeney when he said, you know, there were lots of people I spoke to. They just didn't publicize themselves in the way that Mandelson did. Yeah, that really came through. And there were some really juicy nuggets in some of the evidence that we heard today.

7:34Tom Baldwin:the case essentially being built up against Morgan McSweeney, if I can go that far, was that he was basically finding a job for his mate. His hero. His hero. I mean, he denied that Peter Mandelson was his mentor. He said, I didn't meet him till I was 44. I was already an adult. You know, he wasn't that influential. But he accepted that he was a friend and somebody who he'd taken advice from, particularly in the run up to the 2024 election. And there is one moment where Emily Thornberry says, isn't it right that Peter Mandelson was also going for the job as Chancellor of Oxford University? And he thought he could do not one job, but both jobs.

8:16Tom Baldwin:And did you actually seek advice from a senior civil servant that that to try and explain whether Mandelson would be allowed to do both jobs? Could you be a part time Washington ambassador? and Morgan McSweeney just says, I have no recollection, I can't remember. I mean, what else can he say? It sounds absolutely ridiculous. But this idea that he is perhaps so in thrall to Mandelson that he thinks he's actually either choosing between two jobs in the end. You know, Oxford didn't want him and that one didn't come across. But this idea that he's trying to make things work to the point where he has to go and check whether it might even be possible to do two jobs, he says he doesn't remember that.

8:57Tom Baldwin:And there's another bit which I thought was really interesting where they they remember that Mandelson was actually in Downing Street at the time that Keir Starmer was doing a reshuffle. And Morgan McSweeney is asked whether Mandelson is getting involved in the actual reshuffle. He's already ambassador by this time. It's over the resignation of Angela Rayner. She's the deputy PM. She's gone over tax affairs. And Maddelson happens to pop up in Downing Street and is messaging Morgan McSweeney saying, you should be doing this. You should be appointing that. I would do that. That's how I would do the reshuffle.

9:30Tom Baldwin:McSweeney says, oh, I didn't pay any attention. Loads of people text me. I didn't even get back to him till the end of the day. Fine. But this idea that Mandelson has sort of reasserted himself right into the heart of Keir Starmer's government again, even when he's doing an ambassadorial job that he thinks his views are needed in the reshuffle of Starmer's cabinet. There is a mutual loathing, which is kind of, you know, it does need underlining. There is a mutual loathing between Starmer and Mandelson. And I think it predates Mandelson's appointment and the subsequent sacking and the subsequent grief that is caused that Starmer wanted to keep Mandelson at arm's length.

10:06Tom Baldwin:And Mandelson was forever trying to be part of the inner circle because, you know, that's the oxygen you breathe if you're Peter Mandelson. You have to be part of the inner circle where decisions are being made. And he kept on trying to ingratiate himself in that inner circle. And his attempts were being rebuffed. And I think that Mandelson, you know, found that very difficult and found, you know, why isn't Starmer more interested in me? And you had Morgan McSweeney, who would facilitate the promotion of Peter Mandelson, even though you did learn from McSweeney that Keir Starmer wanted the next ambassador in Washington to be a political appointment.

10:43Tom Baldwin:and he wasn't going to decide who that should be until after the presidential election. You know, if it would have been Kamala Harris... So he had a very small window, essentially, between November and January, which is the inauguration. Exactly. And although it is true that Starmer and Mandelson may have come to dislike each other very strongly, it is absolutely also true that McSweeney and Mandelson had a very, very close relationship. Indeed, Mandelson now rather infamously said, I don't know who and when Morgan McSweeney was invented, but whoever it was, they will find their place in heaven.

11:11Tom Baldwin:So what we saw today, given the nature and history of that relationship, was very striking. Because when I say that McSweeney was determined to continue to do his old master, i.e. Keir Starmer's work for him, you could see that the strategy that McSweeney had throughout was to blame and blame and blame again Peter Mandelson in saying that he was not honest either with him or with Keir Starmer himself. Just listen to this exchange. Do you think it's appropriate when doing due diligence for you as a friend of Peter Mandelson to speak to the Prime Minister and for his responses to be measured by another friend of Peter Mandelson, Matthew Doyle, and for that information to be put before the Prime Minister as a basis upon which they can make a decision?

11:54Tom Baldwin:so I agree and I think that with when I look back on it I certainly think it would have been much much better if I'd asked Pet to ask those follow-up questions I guess my thinking at the time was I put follow-up questions to him in writing and that if a senior member staff did that that he would feel more obligated to give the truth in the full truth and I didn't feel that I got that back from him um but it wasn't my decision it was the prime minister's decision um and he saw the uh dv as as part of that decision he later went on to say i think in a very striking passage that's a very striking exchange that's um when the so um uninformed or how little he knew about the exact nature of the relationship between epstein and manelson he said that when he saw when all the information came out he said that it was like a knife passing through my soul nonetheless i think that you know this does not entirely put to bed one of the central questions of this whole affair which is how much kia starmer and mcsweeney and number 10 knew about the nature of the relationship between manelson and epstein and how much they sought to find out because you could just consider what mcsweeney said there he said he didn't feel he got the full truth back from peter manelson on his Epstein links.

13:19Tom Baldwin:He said he felt that at the time. Nonetheless, Keir Starmer appointed him anyway. So presumably the process there, something is awry or not entirely clear about how it can be that if you feel that even at the time the guy is misleading you, you appoint him anyway. I think we should just break down that there are actually two parts to the due diligence process. There is the vetting which came in January, but earlier than that, there is the Propriety and Ethics Committee which carried out their diligence in December. It was that committee that came back with their red flags waved. They said he is high risk.

13:53Tom Baldwin:So when McSweeney was talking today about the fact that this had come back and he hadn't asked further questions, and Starmer did see that, they'd all seen. They'd all seen the diligence that came back in December saying, warning, warning, this guy is a risk. At that point, and I was told by somebody a couple of weeks ago, and this was breaking, who'd been right in the heart of the vetting process. If that had come back to me and I was pushing somebody forward, I would have stopped at that point. So it is entirely possible for both McSweeney and Starmer to have withdrawn things right then and there in December before any appointment had been announced.

14:29Tom Baldwin:They didn't. They went ahead. They announced it. They then started the vetting process. We know now that Simon Case had said, get that done before. And the vetting went on. And as we now know, they also raised red flags, which, you know, were mitigated or managed. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. But they were told along the way. Sure, but yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's why I think this is so difficult for Keir Starmer. Right now, there's a Commons debate on whether this whole matter should be referred to the Privileges Committee, the same committee that did for Boris Johnson when Harriet Harman was the chair of that committee.

15:04Tom Baldwin:And you've got Labour now kind of whipping and saying, you mustn't support this. We mustn't have this go to a Privileges Committee. The fact that Starmer is in this position is pretty much largely of Starmer's making of the terrible judgments that were made in that period in November, December, January. We've got to get him out to Washington in time for inauguration. And it's got to be Mandelson. You know what, John? I agree with that, although. But I would put a slightly different complexion on it. I think clearly it was a mistake. Now we can see to appoint Mandelson. I think that you can hear from McSweeney and when Starmer has bothered also to make the case you can see their calculations we talked about so much at the time and why it might have been a good idea ended up not being but I actually think the reason that Starmer is in the mess it is in now and the reason that McSweeney is before that committee now is because simply Starmer has failed repeatedly to simply accept that this was a political decision that he made and if he had just taken full responsibility at the very beginning, if he said, look, look, yes, I was getting paperwork saying that, you know, there were potential risks.

16:11Tom Baldwin:Of course I knew that there would be risks. If he just says trade deal, we need a trade deal. Yeah, we need a trade deal. He was an EU, as McSweeney was saying today, he was an EU, former EU trade commissioner. We thought that he would be perfect for the politics and the court of Trump. Of course, as McSweeney said today, if Kamala Harris had won, there's no way we'd have appointed him. But these were very exceptional, unusual circumstances. And even though I didn't really like the guy very much, in the national interest, I swallowed all that because I thought it was a gamble worth taking. I'm sorry.

16:38Tom Baldwin:That obviously wasn't true. Instead, Stom has sort of said that, sort of. But since then, what he's tried to do consistently is to bury himself and bury all of us and the public. And I think they're all pretty confused as a result of this. Bury himself in process is to consistently try and say that if only he'd been told this or if only this bit of the civil service machinery had worked better. or if only someone had informed me about this, that and the other, I would have made a different decision. We all know that's just nonsense. They had decided that the truth of this story, let's get it back to its absolute simplest, the truth of this story is they had decided they wanted Mandelson for all of the reasons we've just described and it wouldn't have mattered really what bit of paperwork came out of the civil service, they would have made the same decision and his failure to just accept that, sorry, just one second, the failure to accept that has meant he's got up in the House of Commons repeatedly and said things which have now proven to be questionable at best.

17:34Tom Baldwin:And if he'd just done what I just said, none of that would have happened and they wouldn't be in the mess they were in. I think all of that is absolutely right. There's another complexion to it, which is, I think, that really sticks in the craw of British public opinion. And I was contacted, funnily enough, over the weekend by Luke Trill, who'd been doing focus groups and saying, you know, what we'd said on the podcast at the end of last week was exactly what was being said to him in focus groups, which is you just you just sacrificed a decent bloke, Olly Robbins, to save your own bloody skin.

18:05Tom Baldwin:And that was it was somehow I think that is so ugly when Olly Robbins was trying to do his best in frigging difficult circumstances, when there was pressure from number 10 that just to get this done and to have Mandelson appointed. And we heard in the committee today there was no plan B if Mandelson had not been approved. And so you think Keir Starmer's willingness to sacrifice somebody else so that they can take the rap for his decision making and his flawed judgment, I think is what people think. Nah, that's not right. I mean, I suppose the question here then is kind of really is where it will leave us by the end of the day.

18:43Tom Baldwin:I'm not sure that these are these two committee performances will have materially changed very much. not least because I mean the the moment of real jeopardy today could have been the vote as you refer to John of the uh that Kemi Badenok has brought forward the motion to refer the prime minister to the privileges committee which would then potentially investigate him and you know in extremis as eventually they found with Boris Johnson if they conclude the MPs on that committee cross-party committee that the prime minister has knowingly misled the house then he could face suspension from the house of commons which in theory in the end could lead to a by-election all sorts of things would be an unprecedented situation.

19:19Tom Baldwin:But it looks like that is not going to happen because the Labour whips, in fairness, have done a pretty good job, I think, over the last 24 to 48 hours in convincing Labour MPs. They've been using this line saying it's a stunt, saying this is a party political thing. We can't possibly have this hanging over the prime minister's head going into the local elections. And it looks like from what we're hearing, the mood music from most Labour MPs is they've accepted that and they are going to be whipped and they'll vote with the whip. There have been a few exceptions to that in the debate so far in the House of Commons, though, including the Labour MP, Emma Lule, who is the MP for South Shields.

19:54Tom Baldwin:ISC investigations, committee hearings and process don't come up on the doorstep. What does come up time and time again is a general feeling that there is something just not right, that politicians are failing to deliver on their promises. Trust has gone and it's been replaced by anger An already fragile fabric of our democracy is eroding further every day this continues This Prime Minister is very careful with his words and does have respect for the office he holds He does want to change this country for the better And he truly believes in public service Something which in recent years may have been sorely lacking from previous Prime Ministers So I can't understand, Mr Speaker, why the Prime Minister doesn't refer himself to the committee with a clear statement that he is doing so to clear his name.

20:48Tom Baldwin:One quick session of the committee could surely see this matter concluded. Instead, it will now drag on and dominate every headline and interview. It will overshadow and undermine every good policy we make and continue to drag every single one of us down. whether any Prime Minister misled the House or not is not a matter for the Foreign Affairs Select Committee nor is it a matter for the Intelligence and Security Committee it is a matter for privileges that's why such a committee exists it may be that opposition parties are using this motion today to box Labour MPs in but I'm not angry about that that's politics some of us here would do the same but I know one thing for certain today Mr Speaker that I will not be voting against this motion, but I want to listen carefully to the rest of this debate because, like everyone, when I came to this House, I wanted to do the right thing, and I hope I continue to do that for however long I have left in this debate.

21:48Tom Baldwin:There's two things to say about that. One is that I know, and you get this from listeners, viewers, sometimes there is a lot of frustration about this story and sometimes that it feels like minutiae, and there is a lot of minutiae to it, and it is dense. But Emma Lula has just summed up there why it is important that certainly the House of Commons takes it seriously and journalists take it seriously, which is that, you know, fundamentally, when you strip all of this away, this story is about something really constitutionally important, which is whether the Prime Minister tells the House of Commons the truth, and if he doesn't do so, he corrects it as quickly as possible.

22:19Tom Baldwin:And if you want evidence for why that's important, just look across the Atlantic and look and see what happens when basically the currency of truth in politics is so devalued that you can no longer, under any circumstances, believe what the leader of the country is saying. So it is important that the House of Commons... It still says something, what I'm saying is, you know, says something good about British democracy and the House of Commons, that it is being taken seriously. That said, it is clear that the very fact that Keir Starmer and the Labour whips feel that they are able to whip Labour MPs to vote against the inquiry tells you something about how they feel the salience of this story is, i.e.

22:55Tom Baldwin:they conclude that the public are just not listening to this anymore. And the comparison, therefore, is with Partygate. Because in a way, Partygate, it was the same charge. Boris Johnson is accused of misleading the House of Commons. Keir Starmer is accused of misleading the House of Commons. But the thing about Partygate was it had such salience with the public. There was no way that Conservative MPs could vote against the investigation. Whereas this story, frankly, does not have that same salience. And Labour MPs and Labour whips feel that they can instruct them to do so. It is slightly uncomfortable, though.

23:24Tom Baldwin:I mean, I hear what Emma Lewis is saying. I think it is uncomfortable on something like this, which is not a policy issue. It's not this is the direction I'm taking the government in as your PM. You're telling your party that you have to concur with whatever sort of message they've wrapped up. I think that's really, I think that's really uncomfortable, actually. To your earlier point about the other side of the Atlantic, though, you watched today Sir Philip Barton. You saw Ollie Robbins last week. You saw Cat Little in the middle. I just came away feeling incredibly proud, actually, of our civil service, that they managed to speak with such clarity and such sort of, I don't know, it felt like there was a real strength of quality to what we can do, you know, in the government, in this country.

24:16Tom Baldwin:And part of this story is about that horrible break between politicians and civil servants at the moment. And it feels at the moment that the civil servants are coming out on top. Well, one point previously of comparison with the US is if this were the US inquiry, you would not have the level of cross-party cooperation we saw today. In a sense, all you would have is grandstanding between Democrats and Republicans. And you'd have Democrats attacking or Republicans defending or vice versa. So at least, you know, British democracy, this might seem boring and dense, but it is actually a sign it's really healthy.

24:44Tom Baldwin:It's alive and kicking. Yeah. Well, in a moment, we will be putting all this to Tom Baldwin, biographer of Sir Keir Starmer and friend too.

25:14Tom Baldwin:again to the victims of the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who were clearly failed by my decision.