McSweeney wants ministers' 'quasi-judicial' powers reined in and the PM's rulebook trimmed

Morgan McSweeney, who ran Keir Starmer's operation until February this year, told the House of Lords constitution committee that the power to make what he called quasi-judicial rulings is blocking wider cabinet debate and keeping the prime minister away from issues of national importance. He didn't name specific cases, but said the process itself is the problem — not any single decision. He also wants the prime minister's powers codified, written down rather than left to convention.

The examples sit close to home. Ed Miliband, as energy secretary, had the job of determining the future of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields, a call later handed to his successor Miatta Fahnbulleh. Steve Reed, then housing and local government secretary, held the power to decide whether a new Chinese super-embassy in east London got the go-ahead.

McSweeney said the rules around how a prime minister operates should be identified, reduced and justified. Ones that guard against abuse of power should stay, he argued, while everything else needs looking at in the round — not one by one, but by their cumulative effect. He cited Starmer being advised he shouldn't send cabinet ministers letters setting out their priorities and asking for progress updates, because convention said no.

His worry runs wider than procedure. McSweeney told the committee that constitutional democracy is under pressure both from the threat of abused power and from governments failing to deliver the programmes they were elected on, and that the rules stopped the government moving at the speed it needed to carry out its lawful mandate. Starmer has himself said he was frustrated at not being able to pull as many levers of power as he wanted.

McSweeney resigned in February over his closeness to the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. He admitted in an interview this year that Labour hadn't been prepared enough for government or for a volatile world when Starmer took office, despite being widely credited inside the party as the elections guru behind the scale of its 2024 win.