Thank you for following the Guardian’s live blog on Morgan McSweeney’s resignation.Our live coverage has now ended.Here’s an overview of everything that happened today:Morgan McSweeney resigned from his role of chief of staff to the prime minister after reportedly pushing for Peter Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to the US in 2024 despite his known ties to Jeffrey Epstein.In his resignation statement, McSweeney said: “When asked, I advised the prime minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice.In public life responsibility must be owned when it matters most, not just when it is most convenient.

In the circumstances, the only honourable course is to step aside.”Reacting to his chief of staff’s departure, Keir Starmer said in a statement: “It’s been an honour working with Morgan McSweeney for many years.He turned our party around after one of its worst ever defeats and played a central role running our election campaign.It is largely thanks to his dedication, loyalty and leadership that we won a landslide majority and have the chance to change the country.”Starmer appointed Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson as acting chiefs of staff, with immediate effect.

Both served as deputy chiefs of staff since 2024.The Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Starmer should also “take responsibility” for his actions.In a post on X, Badenoch wrote: “It’s about time.But once again with this PM it’s somebody else’s fault: ‘Mandelson lied to me’ or ‘Morgan advised me’.” She added: “Keir Starmer has to take responsibility for his own terrible decisions.

But he never does,”Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Daisy Cooper, said the prime minister can “change his advisers all he likes”, but added that “the buck stops with him”,She wrote on X: “We need to see an end to this political soap opera, with answers for the British public and, most importantly, justice for the victims and survivors of Epstein and his network,”Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green party, called for Starmer to step down, saying McSweeney’s resignation was necessary “but not sufficient”,Several Labour MPs also urged Starmer to consider stepping down after McSweeney’s resignation.

Among them was Ian Byrne, who said the prime minister “must now reflect honestly on his own position and ask whether, for the good of the country and the Labour party, he should follow” McSweeney’s lead.Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, also warned that McSweeney’s resignation will not protect the prime minister, adding that Starmer’s position is “untenable”.Other Labour MPs spoke out in Starmer’s defence.They included Natalie Fleet, the Labour MP for Bolsover, who told LBC “we have never had a prime minister that cares as much about violence against women and girls” as he does.John Slinger, Rugby’s Labour MP, urged Labour to “rally behind the prime minister”.

He said: “We don’t ditch a leader just because the going gets tough.”Natalie Fleet, the Labour MP for Bolsover, has defended Keir Starmer, saying “we have never had a prime minister that cares as much about violence against women and girls” as he does.As a reminder, Morgan McSweeney resigned after he reportedly pushed for Peter Mandelson to be appointed UK ambassador to the US despite his known ties to Jeffrey Epstein.Amid growing calls for Starmer to step down, including from Labour MPs, Fleet told LBC:This is a man that cares deeply and is absolutely determined to use the full force of the state so that we can do everything that we can to eradicate violence against women and girls.I want him to stay in post.

… He has my absolute full support,The head of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has said the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the US could be “fatal for this government unless the Labour party changes its leadership”,Eddie Dempsey, who serves as general secretary of the RMT, a union that is not affiliated to any political party, said: “The Labour government is being held back by an elitist faction epitomised by Morgan McSweeney whose resignation is long overdue,“However, the vestiges of New Labour are poisoning the well of the entire movement, opening the door to electoral defeat by alienating millions of working-class voters in Labour heartlands,”Dempsey claimed New Labour “created a toxic political culture” where the party’s leadership “turned on trade unionists, and abandoned workers in favour of a corrupt wealthy elite”.

He added: “Mandelson’s association with a notorious paedophile and Starmer’s decision to hire him as US ambassador could be fatal for this government unless the Labour party changes its leadership and starts organising society in the interests of working people, rather than doffing the cap to the money markets, spivs and speculators,”Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, has said Morgan McSweeney’s resignation was “a start”, but more needs to be done to tackle factionalism within the party,She told the Press Association: “It is a start, but we need to know how decisions have been made in the Labour party, including the role of Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney’s ‘kitchen cabinet’, and how this whole culture will turn away from the factionalism to an inclusive culture which seeks to listen and engage MPs and prevent future errors over policy,”It has been reported that McSweeney convened a “kitchen cabinet” of like-minded Labour figures who met on Sunday evenings at the London home of Roger Liddle, a Labour peer and old friend of Mandelson,Ian Byrne has said the prime minister “must now reflect honestly on his own position and ask whether, for the good of the country and the Labour party, he should follow” Morgan McSweeney’s lead and step down.

The Labour MP for Liverpool West Derby wrote in a post on X that McSweeney’s resignation was “in the best interests of the government”,He said McSweeney, the “man lauded for masterminding” Labour’s 2024 election victory, “has also been central to the political misjudgements and errors made since winning” that election,Byrne added:His departure is also in the best interests of the Labour party,McSweeney has overseen the erosion of internal democracy and the normalisation of a deeply damaging factionalism that members and MPs are now living with - and which I experienced first hand in 2022,But this will not stop with a single resignation.

A true change in political direction must now come from - and be led from - the very top.As we’ve reported, Keir Starmer has appointed Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson as acting chiefs of staff, with immediate effect.Cuthbertson and Alakeson have shared the role as McSweeney’s deputy, with Cuthbertson tending to concentrate on logistics and operations.Cuthbertson has a long background in Labour politics, having worked in No 10 under Gordon Brown and then as part of Ed Miliband’s events team when he was party leader.Seen as a trusted pair of hands, she was known for her detailed logistical plans during the election campaign, which helped Starmer avoid the kind of mistakes that bedevilled the early days of Rishi Sunak’s campaign.

Alakeson won plaudits before the election for leading Starmer’s outreach to the business community.Like many of those at the top of the Labour party, she has a background at the Resolution Foundation thinktank, where she was deputy chief executive.Before that she worked in the Treasury as a policy adviser.Those who have worked with her in No 10, where she was deputy chief of staff until Sunday, have praised her work ethic and her ability to work with groups outside the Labour party.But as a policy expert some say she lacks the raw political skills so ruthlessly employed by McSweeney.

An email has just gone round No 10 staff confirming that the prime minister has asked Jill Cuthbertson and Vidhya Alakeson to be acting chiefs of staff, with immediate effect.Both Alakeson and Cuthbertson have served as deputy chiefs of staff since 2024.Downing Street has suggested that Keir Starmer and his chief of staff decided together that it was the right moment for McSweeney to move on, indicating that ultimately the prime minister made the call.Starmer is expected to provide an update as early as Monday on how the government is addressing the issues highlighted by the Mandelson scandal.He instructed officials to begin work on this last week, and to deliver at pace.

It was unclear whether this update would be an Commons statement to MPs, a speech or a press conference.Government insiders said that Starmer’s policy focus would remain on tackling the cost of living and would stick with the existing economic strategy to deliver it.Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, has said Morgan McSweeney’s resignation should not be treated as a “cleansing moment”.Lewis explained that McSweeney “was not an aberration”, but “the tip of an iceberg”.He continued:What he represents is a political culture that has dominated Labour for a generation.

A culture forged under Blair and Mandelson that taught the party to be relaxed about extreme wealth, comfortable in the orbit of billionaires, lobbyists and corporate power, and increasingly detached from the lives of the people it was created to represent.The Mandelson scandal matters because it exposes that culture in its rawest form.Proximity to wealth and power was not a by-product.It was the point.Lewis claimed that unless Labour confronts the culture that “rewarded closeness to wealth, blurred ethical lines and treated democratic accountability as an inconvenience”, McSweeney’s resignation “will amount to little more than damage limitation”.

Kim Johnson, the Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside, has warned that Morgan McSweeney’s resignation will not protect the prime minister, adding that Keir Starmer’s position is “untenable”,She told Sky News that McSweeney was Starmer’s “adviser, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with” the prime minister,Johnson added:[McSweeney] was not working alone; others were responsible for bringing the party into disrepute and endless factionalism,His resignation will not protect the PM – his position is untenable,Morgan McSweeney’s resignation comes just days after Keir Starmer described him as an “essential part of my team”.

On Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch criticised McSweeney – who is seen as having been instrumental in pushing for Peter Mandelson to become UK ambassador to the US – and pressed the prime minister on whether he still had confidence in him.Starmer responded: “Morgan McSweeney is an essential part of my team.He helped me change the Labour party and win an election.Of course, I have confidence.”The following day, a Downing Street spokesperson said Starmer had “full confidence” in his chief of staff.

Steve Reed also insisted on Thursday that the prime minister and McSweeney were safe in their jobs.Asked whether Starmer’s position is secure, the housing secretary told BBC Breakfast: “Of course it is.”On Sky News, he was pressed on whether McSweeney is safe in his role, after being blamed by many Labour MPs for pushing for Mandelson’s appointment.Reed answered: “Yes, of course he is.”Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader has said Morgan McSweeney’s resignation “won’t save Keir Starmer”.

Posting on X, Liz Saville Roberts added: “Making a sacrificial lamb of his chief of staff cannot erase the prime minister’s own failure of judgement in appointing Peter Mandelson as US ambassador,”Gordon McKee, the Labour MP for Glasgow South, has posted a lengthy statement on social media in defence of Morgan McSweeney,McKee acknowledged that “McSweeney made a mistake on Mandelson”, but added that “he is not alone in that”,What he is alone in is his extraordinary ability,Morgan started as a receptionist, and rose up to almost single handedly mastermind our return from the wilderness to a Labour Government.

McKee added: “As a member of staff he doesn’t get to rebut the nonsense that is said about him,I have known him personally for six years, and he is one of the most decent people that I’ve ever met in politics,”In a separate post on X, McKee said he knows McSweeney will “be appalled by the revelations about Peter Mandelson and thinking of the victims” of Jeffrey Epstein’s “horrific crimes”,Sir Keir Starmer should “look at his own position” and consider following Morgan McSweeney by stepping down, a Labour MP has said,Brian Leishman, the MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, said McSweeney’s “resignation as chief of staff to the prime minister is in the best interests of the government”.

He was at the heart of the political misjudgements and errors that have been made since winning the general election,It is also in the best interests of the Labour party as he was instrumental in the lack of internal democracy and the culture of intense factionalism we are suffering from,Speaking to the Press Association, Leishman said that there needs to be “change in political direction and that comes from the very top, so the prime minister must look at his own position and question whether he should follow McSweeney’s lead one last time, and resign for the good of the country and the Labour party”,In the early hours of 5 July 2024, Keir Starmer arrived at Tate Modern in central London to celebrate Labour’s landslide election victory,As he prepared to address the throng of cheering activists, he was flanked by two people: his wife, Victoria, and his closest aide, Morgan McSweeney.

A reluctant McSweeney, it was reported, was dragged on stage by the soon-to-be prime minister to a roar from the party’s foot soldiers.A few years previously, this moment had seemed impossible.Many believe that, without McSweeney, it would have been.Shortly before Christmas 2019, under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour had suffered its worst election defeat since 1935.Voters in swathes of the party’s industrial heartlands in the north and the Midlands – from retired coalminers in County Durham to steelworkers in Scunthorpe – had battled the December elements to vote Tory for the first time.

Labour seemed lost to the unelectable hard left and some predicted it would never win another general election.Yet fewer than five years later it had done just that.Not only had the party clawed back most of its “red wall”, it had triumphed in a handful of seats that had never before had a Labour MP.McSweeney was credited as the brains behind one of the most staggering political comebacks in British history.The now disgraced Peter Mandelson, one of the architects of New Labour, summed up how the party’s moderates once felt about McSweeney when he said: “I don’t know who and how and when he was invented.

But whoever it was, they will find their place in heaven.”Yet it is McSweeney’s relationship with his mentor Mandelson that has been his undoing.Labour MP John Slinger has defended Keir Starmer and rejected calls for him to step down.In a statement posted to X, the Rugby MP said “we don’t ditch a leader just because the going gets tough”, adding that “it’s in the national interest for Keir Starmer to stay as prime minister”.Slinger continued:Since I’ve done that, I have been approached in the street by constituents telling me they heard me on the radio and totally agree.

I have had CEOs of companies message me to say they agree.And I have had people from all around the country, whether Labour or not, saying they think the last thing the country needs is leadership speculations and that we should support the prime minister.Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green party, has called for Keir Starmer to step down, saying Morgan McSweeney’s resignation was necessary “but not sufficient”.Reacting to McSweeney’s resignation on X, Polanski wrote: “Necessary but not sufficient.“He knew