Good morning. One of the most powerful jobs in British politics is also one of the least well defined. The Downing Street chief of staff sits at the centre of power, acting as a prime minister’s most senior political adviser, gatekeeper and internal enforcer – and when the job goes wrong, it tends to go wrong very publicly.
That happened at the weekend, when Morgan McSweeney resigned as Keir Starmer’s chief of staff after revelations about Peter Mandelson contained in the Epstein files. In his resignation statement, McSweeney said that “in public life responsibility must be owned when it matters most”, adding that he took full accountability for advising Starmer on the appointment of Mandelson as US ambassador.
