Former Downing Street chief of staff Morgan McSweeney has stated that the Labour Party failed to adequately prepare for government before winning the general election.
In a BBC podcast interview published on July 2, 2026, McSweeney said senior party leadership lacked sufficient discussions about state transformation and readiness for office after being out of power since the 1990s.
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This lack of preparation contributed to institutional turmoil that culminated in Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's resignation after just two years in office.
“I think that we didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to be in,” McSweeney told the BBC's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast.
He explained that the government assumed power without a concrete operational blueprint to reform an out-of-shape state structure and deliver immediate changes for the public.
“We are now in a very different era than when Labour was last in government, and I think we didn’t have enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it, what that meant for the state, how the state needed to be reformed, because in lots of ways the state is really out of shape and is unable to deliver for people,” McSweeney said.
The former strategist, who previously maintained a private profile, said he decided to speak publicly to formally close his chapter in political strategy and transition to a new phase of his life.
