Morgan McSweeney’s departure from Downing Street is the biggest shift in power at the heart of Keir Starmer’s operation since he came to office. As the prime minister appoints two acting replacements for his closest aide, here are the people vying for the prime minister’s ear in the new No 10 operation.
Vidhya Alakeson
Alakeson won plaudits before the election for leading Starmer’s outreach to the business community. Like many of those at the top of the Labour party, she has a background at the Resolution Foundation thinktank, where she was deputy chief executive. Before that she worked in the Treasury as a policy adviser.
Those who have worked with her in No 10, where she was deputy chief of staff until Sunday, have praised her work ethic and her ability to work with groups outside the Labour party. But as a policy expert some say she lacks the raw political skills so ruthlessly employed by McSweeney.
Acting chief of staff
Jill Cuthbertson
Cuthbertson and Alakeson have shared the role as McSweeney’s deputy, with Cuthbertson tending to concentrate on logistics and operations.
Cuthbertson has a long background in Labour politics, having worked in No 10 under Gordon Brown and then as part of Ed Miliband’s events team when he was party leader. Seen as a trusted pair of hands, she was known for her detailed logistical plans during the election campaign, which helped Starmer avoid the kind of mistakes that bedevilled the early days of Rishi Sunak’s campaign.
Acting chief of staff
Darren Jones
It was just five months ago that Starmer relaunched his Downing Street team, with Darren Jones at its centre in the newly created role of chief secretary to the prime minister.
The Labour MP and former Treasury chief secretary was brought in to help the government deliver the prime minister’s priorities. He told allies it was his job to bash heads together when ministers could not agree on a particular course of action.
Starmer’s regard for Jones was clear from the outset, when he tried to get McSweeney to report to him rather than straight to Starmer himself. McSweeney refused, but insiders say Jones’s arrival marked the beginning of the decline in McSweeney’s influence.
Chief secretary to the prime minister
Amy Richards
Richards was a long-time adviser to Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, and worked on her leadership campaign in 2015. She was brought into Downing Street in September as Starmer looked to revamp the way his operation communicated with Labour MPs after the welfare rebellion.
Loyal and low-key, Richards has encouraged the prime minister to do far more regular outreach to his parliamentary party, with some success. Starmer has been seen more in the Commons, including in the MPs’ tea room, assuaging concerns among colleagues that he had become too distant from the concerns of his own colleagues.
Political director
Harvey Redgrave
A former Fulbright scholar, Redgrave is a home affairs policy specialist who previously spent seven years at the Tony Blair Institute.
Redgrave was a senior adviser to Miliband when he was leader of the opposition. He was appointed as the head of the policy unit in September as part of a shakeup that some on the left saw as a push by Starmer to expel the few remaining true progressives from his inner team.
Head of No 10 policy unit
