Sarwar’s McSweeney Dilemma
This was always a weird framing. Before the general election Anas Sarwar and Paul Hutcheon were positioning Labour as somehow a defence against Starmer’s incoming government. “Vote Labour and we’ll protect you from, er Labour!” seemed to be the tortuous logic.
Fast-forward three months and this has all, predictably fallen apart as Labour split on the issue of Labour’s cut to winter fuel payments. Anas ‘Watch my Lips’ Sarwar made an awkward speech at Holyrood yesterday insisting the cut was “not a decision the Chancellor wanted to make”.
The Scottish Parliament voted by 99 to 14 in favour of a motion from First Minister John Swinney, insisting the Labour government at Westminster changes course over its decision to means test the support.
But Sarwar suffered an embarrassment as former Scottish leader, Richard Leonard MSP, increasingly an outspoken critic of the Labour leadership, and Labour MSP Alex Rowley backed the SNP vote.
The motion passed with 99 votes. Only 14 MSPs opposed it.
Five other Labour MSPs – Monica Lennon, Carol Mochan, Pauline McNeill, Rhoda Grant and Katy Clark – did not vote.
This is a real problem for Scottish Labour.
You could call them the Fuel Poverty Fourteen:
Just as Ruth Davidson had to pretend to stand up to the weirdest and worst excesses of the Tory government, playing at being a rebel while also cuddling up to her senior colleagues, so too Anas Sarwar has to pretend to be a great ally of Scottish voters while toeing the line with the leadership.
It’s not been a great week for Labour as the handsomely paid Sue Gray was jettisoned to be an ‘Envoy for the Nations and Regions’ whatever that means, as Starmer’s government continues to stumble under allegations of corporate capture and sleaze. Papers described how “Labour election guru Morgan McSweeney will take over as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, after Sue Gray quit citing fears she was “becoming a distraction” to the government.”
It’s a murky tale. Paul Knaggs, editor of Labour Heartland and self-styled ‘leftwing refugee’ argues:
“The state of British politics is not just disappointing; it’s a festering wound on the body politic, oozing with nepotism, cronyism, and a brazen disregard for the people. We’ve not so much swapped out one set of crooks for another as we’ve witnessed a changing of the guard in a kleptocracy masquerading as a democracy.”
Following the incestuous plots of Labour’s dynastic families and power couples Knaggs writes:
“Then there’s Imogen Walker, MP for Hamilton and Clyde Valley, with direct connections to No. 10 as the wife of Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s head of political strategy and mastermind of his election campaign. Walker and McSweeney both cut their teeth in politics on Lambeth Council, though they’ve since upgraded to the rural calm of South Lanarkshire.”
McSweeney’s role has been rapid and ideological. As Labour election guru and one of Sir Keir’s closest aides, Mr McSweeney has huge influence within the party and was credited with Labour’s landslide general election victory earlier this year swinging Labour to the right.
Steve Reed from Lambeth Council and Morgan McSweeney formed the Labour Together think tank in 2017. Mr McSweeney was appointed director of the influential policy group with the primary aim “to move the Labour Party from the hard left” and replace the then leader, Jeremy Corbyn. When Mr McSweeney arrived in the leader of the opposition’s office after Sir Keir’s leadership victory in 2020, he ensured that supporters of Mr Corbyn were removed from every lever of power inside the party. He was quickly chosen as Sir Keir’s chief of staff.
Despite the much-publicised fallout between Sue Gray and Morgan McSweeney they both now appear as major figures in Scotland. If Anas Sarwar was looking over his shoulder as he failed to live up to Paul Hutcheon’s propaganda yesterday it was back at the like of Scotland’s new envoy and Morgan McSweeney.
What changed days there are from when Scotland had ministers in the UK and could credibly be said to have some sway at a senior level.
But if you thought that appointing McSweeney over Gray was a fresh clean start, you’d be wrong.
Nick Gutteridge, the Chief Political Correspondent at the Telegraph has a story that: “Morgan McSweeney’s wife Imogen Walker received £10,000 from the organisation he used to run. Labour Together has donated £210,000 to members of Keir Starmer’s top team this year — four times as much as Lord Alli.”
Gutteridge writes: “Labour Together gave the money to Imogen Walker, who is married to Sir Keir Starmer’s new chief of staff, to pay for campaign materials. She won her seat in Scotland with a healthy majority and was appointed as a ministerial aide to Rachel Reeves.
“Mr McSweeney was director of Labour Together from 2017 until April 2020, when he left to become Sir Keir’s first chief of staff as opposition leader. During his time there, the think tank played a leading role in internal efforts to wrestle control of Labour back from Jeremy Corbyn. He has been credited with overseeing a purge of anti-Semitism and devising Sir Keir’s “country first, party second” pitch.”
“There is no suggestion Mr McSweeney was personally involved in the donation to his wife, made four years after he left Labour Together, but the revelation will raise further questions over the large sums that the think tank has donated to MPs and ministers in recent years.
Last year, the group was fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to declare £730,000 in donations while Mr McSweeney was in charge.”
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Mike – thanks for this information. I consider myself reasonably well informed politically but I was unaware of Morgan McSweeney’s family connections.
The issue of political representatives and family connections was been brought home to me at recent GE where I have discovered that my new MP Chris Murray is the son of longtime Labour MP & MSP Margaret Curran. This opened my eyes to just how many current MP’s/MSP’s are related to other MP’s / MSP’s. This is not necessarily a party political issue as it seems common practice across all parties.
This familial connection made me wonder:
1)to what extent nepotism enabled the relatives of current/previous MP’s to progress through the political system?
2)To what extent the political philosophy of familial politicians are based on their own individual thinking and experience as opposed to indoctrination? (this is a question that all of us can ask but I would imagine the risk of indoctrination would be much higher in a professional political family.
3)When it comes to voting on individual issues if an MP has a family connection with the Party is this liable to make this individual more tribal than principled? Not only would they voting against party loyalty but also against family loyalty.
My last observation, backing up these queries, is the fact that although I can reel of names of MP’s/MSP’s who are next generation I cannot think of any examples where they represent a different political party.
Paragraph 9: should be “toeing the line”, I think.
No other quibbles!
Ach, damn, thanks Anna!
The state of British politics is not just disappointing; it’s a festering wound on the body politic, oozing with nepotism, cronyism, and a brazen disregard for the people. We’ve not so much swapped out one set of crooks for another as we’ve witnessed a changing of the guard in a kleptocracy masquerading as a democracy.”
Perhaps a new high watermark for the negative reasons why we would almost certainly be better off with the full powers of Independence .
Unfortunately , as evidenced by the previous high watermarks of Johnson ,Truss et all, the constant diminishing of Scotland by Westminster in itself is not compelling enough to persuade our citizens to favour Independence.
Only an explicit, radical and inclusive alternative will stimulate people to consider change..
Only when our dialogue shifs, wholesale, to such a narrative will change become possible.
” If you keep doing the same things, you’ll end up getting the same results”
Time for those who support change, have a platform / have energy to participate, to do it a different way.
these politicians set a very bad example, 200 hrs unpaid work out in the community would do them & the rest ov us a power ae gude
“Vote Labour and we’ll protect you from Labour”
Memories of the Feeble Fifty of the 1980s come flooding back.