Pat McFadden is the most powerful Labour politician most people have never heard of. As Rachel Reeves’ No 2 in the shadow Treasury team, with responsibility for Labour’s public spending plans, he could derail the dreams of shadow cabinet colleagues with just a raised eyebrow.
In his new role preparing for the election campaign and – should Labour win it – running the Cabinet Office, he assumes even greater responsibility for the direction of Keir Starmer’s party. Yet much of it is likely to be done quietly, and efficiently, behind the scenes.
McFadden, 58, is a veteran of Tony Blair’s era, working on the 1997 election campaign alongside Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, becoming the prime minister’s political secretary in 2002, before entering parliament in 2005 as MP for Wolverhampton South East, a seat with one of the highest levels of deprivation in the country.
When Mandelson, by then a peer, was made business secretary in 2008, McFadden was his deputy, running parts of the department and representing it in the House of Commons. “Pat has seen it all,” he says. “He is a walking encyclopedia of political and policy knowledge, and experience in government.”
Mandelson describes his former No 2 as “pure New Labour”, adding: “He’s solid, hard-nosed, centre-left. He lives and breathes it. But he’s not a receptacle following others’ ideas – he has his own.”
McFadden’s involvement with the Labour party goes back further – and deeper – than Blair, to his working-class roots in Glasgow, where he was the youngest of seven siblings growing up in the 1970s and 1980s under the shadow of Margaret Thatcher.
He joined the Labour party at Edinburgh university, citing Neil Kinnock taking on Militant in his 1985 Bournemouth conference speech as an inspiration, and soon after graduating he took a job as a researcher for Labour’s Scottish affairs spokesperson, Donald Dewar.
McFadden’s allies describe him as a “pragmatist” who is “never ideological” and say that he is driven by giving the same “choices and chances” to those that don’t have money as those that do, in key areas such as school standards, NHS reform and social mobility.
While his friends describe him as “loyal”, with “a lovely manner” and “good with people”, they all agree that he is a “very serious man” who doesn’t suffer fools – or his political enemies – gladly.
He is unforgiving when it comes to attacking the Conservatives, and despite that he still garners respect from across the House of Commons, with even Tory MPs silent when he talks.
The former business secretary Andrea Leadsom, who sat with McFadden, a Celtic fan and a keen early morning runner, on the Treasury select committee between 2010 and 2014, describes him as a “serious and hard-working colleague”.
Yet she also recalls his sense of humour. On a committee visit to China the MPs toured the biggest toy factory in the world. “Pat and I went to find a toy car for his toddler and we discovered you could buy 50 toy cars but not one,” she says.
Over the years McFadden has made enemies on the left of the Labour party. He was sacked from Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench in January 2016 for “disloyalty” after a Commons statement on the 2015 Paris attacks, in which he condemned the “view that sees terrorist acts as always being a response or a reaction to what we in the west do”. His dramatic exit triggered a number of frontbench resignations.
One Labour MP on the soft-left of the party, who declined to be named, said: “He may be softly spoken, but he’s as hard as they come. He’s been absolutely ruthlessly focused on fiscal discipline, but where’s the hope? Where’s the inspiration?”
Allies of McFadden say that he understands the balancing act between reassurance and hope, and doesn’t like it being posed as a choice. “He thinks that any political party has to do both and that it’s a mistake to say it’s all about one or the other,” one says.
McFadden, along with elections supremo Morgan McSweeney, will be central to that. “He’s got lots of campaigning experience and will bring grip and discipline and making sure the political message matches everything else Labour does,” says Campbell.
Starmer’s decision to bolster his political operation – which even some of his closest allies admits he needs – means that Ellie Reeves, the shadow chancellor’s sister, will be McFadden’s deputy. His wife, Marianna, is already McSweeney’s No 2.
Mandelson believes that McFadden and McSweeney will complement each other as they steer Labour towards the next election. “Pat is cautious, then decisive. Morgan is a hard-driven street fighter with loads of courage.”
Yet even with his expanded influence, McFadden is not seen as ambitious in his own right. “He’s got the potential to be a really exceptional politician,” says Campbell. “But he’s diffident and dry and doesn’t like thrusting himself into the spotlight.”
His allies admit he is “not enormously ambitious” and that he would rather just help Starmer in “any way that he thinks is useful”. But one points out that his decades on the political frontline gives him experience, and with it influence, that few in Labour can replicate.
