{"id":149220,"date":"2024-10-07T15:16:19","date_gmt":"2024-10-07T15:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/07\/morgan-mcsweeney-who-is-the-pms-new-chief-of-staff\/"},"modified":"2024-10-07T15:16:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-07T15:16:20","slug":"morgan-mcsweeney-who-is-the-pms-new-chief-of-staff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/07\/morgan-mcsweeney-who-is-the-pms-new-chief-of-staff\/","title":{"rendered":"Morgan McSweeney: Who is the PM&#8217;s new chief of staff?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/90c5\/live\/666c30b0-84b8-11ef-9fd2-1ff0272e012f.jpg?fit=1024,576&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Morgan McSweeney: Who is the PM&#8217;s new chief of staff?\" title=\"Morgan McSweeney: Who is the PM&#8217;s new chief of staff?\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Morgan McSweeney has become the prime minister&#8217;s chief of staff, after Sue Gray quit the role saying &#8220;intense commentary&#8221; around her position &#8220;risked becoming a distraction&#8221;.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">It followed weeks of criticism and briefings against Ms Gray, who had reportedly clashed with Mr McSweeney in his role as the PM&#8217;s chief political adviser. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Downing Street will be hoping the promotion of Mr McSweeney, who masterminded Labour&#8217;s general election campaign, will help the government to move on after stories of infighting and rows over political donations.<!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Born in Macroom, County Cork, Mr McSweeney joined Labour under Tony Blair, working in a junior role at the party&#8217;s headquarters. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">He later started working for Steve Reed, who is now environment secretary but at the time was a councillor in Lambeth, south London, where he was trying to regain control of the party from the hard left. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">In 2006 Mr McSweeney helped run the party&#8217;s successful campaign to take control of the council, with Reed becoming leader. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">His reputation as a skilled campaign strategist was further cemented in Barking and Dagenham, where the far-right, anti-immigrant British National Party was gaining support and hoping to win its first parliamentary seat 2010. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Mr McSweeney played a key role in the fight to defeat the BNP in the area, with a campaign which focused on local issues.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">However, his campaigns were not always a success &#8211; in 2015 he ran Blairite Liz Kendall&#8217;s bid to become Labour leader, where she secured only 4.5% of votes in the contest won by Jeremy Corbyn. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">In 2017, Mr McSweeney became a director of the think tank Labour Together, which opposed the direction of the party under Corbyn and went on to back Sir Keir Starmer. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">He left the organisation to run Sir Keir&#8217;s 2020 leadership bid, later becoming his chief of staff, when he played a key role in removing Corbyn supporters from positions of power. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">As the Labour&#8217;s campaign director, Mr McSweeney was tasked with devising the party&#8217;s strategy for July&#8217;s general election. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">He has been credited with being the brains behind the campaign, which saw the party win a landslide victory. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Among the new Labour MPs to be elected was his wife, Imogen Walker, a former councillor in Lambeth who now represents Hamilton and Clyde Valley. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fYAfXe\">Now the PM&#8217;s chief of staff &#8211; one of the most important roles in Downing Street &#8211; his influence over the future direction of the government has been strengthened further. <!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cy0l9z7qv0lo\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Morgan McSweeney has become the prime minister&#8217;s chief of staff, after Sue Gray quit the role saying &#8220;intense commentary&#8221; around her position &#8220;risked becoming a distraction&#8221;. It followed weeks of criticism and briefings against Ms Gray, who had reportedly clashed with Mr McSweeney in his role as the PM&#8217;s chief political adviser. Downing Street will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149221,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/90c5\/live\/666c30b0-84b8-11ef-9fd2-1ff0272e012f.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[302,118166,4534,6154,500],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149220"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":149222,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149220\/revisions\/149222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}