Former Downing Street Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney has acknowledged that the Labour Party failed to adequately prepare for government before its general election victory, leading to severe operational difficulties and the eventual resignation of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
In a broadcast interview published on July 2, 2026, McSweeney stated on the BBC's Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast that top party leadership lacked critical discussions about state transformation and readiness for office after being out of power since the 1990s.
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Lack of Preparation for a Changed World
McSweeney, who resigned from his position in February, explained that the government struggled because it did not establish a clear theory on how to implement fast-paced changes for a public weary of unfulfilled political promises.
“I think that we didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to be in,” he said.
He noted that the political era had changed drastically since Labour last held office.
“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,” McSweeney added.
He rejected the notion that the lack of preparation lay with a single individual, such as former chief of staff Sue Gray, and accepted personal responsibility for the collective party shortfalls.
