YouSaid · the spoken record

Morgan McSweeney

lines on the record: 79
first: 2026-07-02
most recent: 2026-07-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Oh, the country Think what really bothered him was what he saw going wrong in the country, community cohesion, social cohesion breaking apart. Public services falling to bits after the People falling between the cracks and the country becoming disconnected from the rest of the world. I mean, I think he really was focused on the institutions of the country more than an ideology. And I think he wanted things to be run in the interests of the country, run the interests of people. And he thought they were broken. He was very driven by wanting to fix government, rebuild trust in public institutions.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I definitely played an important part in Kir's leadership campaign. I don't think that campaigns work in such a way that you can just say yours was the only contribution that mattered. Campaigns are not about one individual. Campaign teams are about brilliant people. And I would say that Keir would say that he couldn't get elected without his team. Of course that's true. But if I didn't exist, Keir stood at one of the leadership.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was no database, but of course when you're a campaign manager, you like to believe that your contribution was big and sizable, but there was a lot of people, a lot of brilliant people who worked on that campaign, MPs who supported him, and Keir was a very strong candidate and had a great chance of winning without me. I wanted to support him because when I met him, I thought he was he had the right values. He was a decent guy and I thought you can only do this properly if you believe that the person you're backing should be Prime Minister, not should just be leader of Labour Party.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I knew at some point Thufford lay party to move forward there needed to be a change of leader, and I was willing to support the right candidate. As an organization, they were together. Some of the MPs were going to support different candidates. Some of the MPs we're going to stand and the donors were going to do their own thing and the staff and the structure itself was going to remain neutral. So that was always the decision. I was taking a personal decision about who I would back in that situation. Had decided or had begun to think seriously about standing for LEADER long before I met him. So he was already on that path. He didn't need me to put him on that path.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To get a good leader elected, not to get rid of Corbyn. Actually, that was never my agenda. In that period 2017-2018, I thought Labour Party was in the wrong direction morally. There were some who thought the Labour Party, they should leave the Labour Party. Obviously change UK got set up Labour MPs left. I thought that was wrong. I thought that was the wrong answer at the time. I thought Labour Party was a 100-year-old institution. It deserved more time and more support than just people walking away. There were others who were constantly trying to get a challenge against Jeremy Corbyn. I wasn't in that camp. So I thought, especially after the 2017 general election, that Jeremy Corbyn was going to be the leader until the next general election whenever that was going to be. My thinking at the time was that could be five years. It might not be until 2022. And Jeremy Corbyn would remain leader all through that period.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me, the greatest idea in politics, it was set up to represent working people, or most working people didn't even have a vote. It did that. It formed governments. It builds the NHS. It changed the world. It set up international institutions. And it was being used as like a private club. And I thought that was wrong and that needed to change. And that was fundamentally what was driving my desire to want the Labour Party to change, to support a leader, to work at Labour together, to make the Labour Party more focused on the voters it was set up to represent.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I didn't like what they were doing. I was very angry about the anti-Semitism, but even more angry about the denial of anti-Semitism, because in lots of ways that was almost worse. The failure to tackle a problem is obviously a serious matter of itself, but to deny the problem even exists felt like it was gaslighting people. So I thought it was getting into a very bad place morally. And I didn't like that that was happening to Labour Party because the Labour Party was this.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I did. It and you're right, you can love it and hate it. My karaoke song is With or Without You and it took me a few years to realize that the subjects of Wither Without You for me was probably the Labour Party.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Completely fell in love with the Labour Party. It was my family, it was my home. I loved election campaigns. I started getting more into them. I liked competing. I liked working out whether what you're doing is you really get tested in an election campaign. It's not theoretical. At the end of a year, the first Thursday of May, you're going to find out what you're right or wrong, whether you're good enough or not good enough. And I quite enjoyed that. I like competing. So I liked all sorts of aspects of it. Labour party became just a family. It gave me such a life, all my friends, my job. I met my wife.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I don't think I was giving people orders. So I'm very focused on people. I still am. I still think a lot about who's going to benefit from the decisions that we take. That is always, always has been, always will be my North Star. No matter what job I was ever doing, I thought I was delivering a Labour government for the people that needed a Labour government where I was sitting on a reception desk or sitting in a chief of staff's desk at number 10. I was essentially doing the same job, following the same mission all of the time. And along the way while I was focused on this,”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I just opened the door and said good morning to people. I was so excited when I got that job. I thought it was the most amazing thing. Not long before I wasn't sure what my life was going to be. When the 1997 election was going on, I was unemployed and more or less homeless. I was staying with friends. So it felt like such a long shot, such an amazing long shot that four years later I was going to be working for the Labour Party. It didn't bother me what job it was. It felt like the privilege of a lifetime. I never thought I'd get an opportunity like that. And if that was my last one in politics, I'd have been happy. I thought people are not going to ever believe this.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I definitely disagree with that politics. I don't think that far left and far right politics are the same. They're very different. They have different problems in different ways. And I think that they are, I don't categorize them as the same kind of challenge.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was catastrophic for the most vulnerable people in Lambeth. It was absolutely catastrophic for them to put ideology above people, to put ideology above institutions. And I knew exactly the kind of people who would suffer when that happened. Because what I would see in pubs and building sites was slightly different representation of the Irish immigrant. So on building sites, you'd meet guys who were outwardly confident social, looking forward to life. In pubs, you often saw the other side of that life, a loneliness, a lack of access to decent housing, decent jobs, lack of security in their lives. When labour is not focused on delivering for people and instead focus on ideology or personalities, then people suffer. And in local governments, the most vulnerable people suffer. So I don't have time for people who put ideology above people.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think false hope is a dangerous thing. I think not running institutions for the public is a dangerous thing. I saw that through the years when I worked in local government when local government leadership became focused on itself, whether that is because of personal reasons or ideological reasons.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I discussed politics on building sites and pubs, but I understood more about the lives that people really had and how they lived them.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think when I was younger, I grew up in the late 80s, early 90s. I was actually quite idealistic. I was a member of CND. I bought recycling to my school. I was angry about the treatment of the Bermium-6. I was celebrating when Nelson Mandera was released. I grew up in a time when Berlin Wall was coming down. So I was quite an idealistic teenager. I wasn't into party politics or elections. I was into ideas. Moved to London when I was 17. I got off a coach about a half a mile from here at Victoria Station with about £50 in my pocket, a driving sense of adventure. And for most of the next seven years, I worked in pubs, I worked in building sites. So I didn't work in politics until I was 24. And working, especially in pubs, it rooted my politics a lot, moved away from ideas and more towards people.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In local government, and it doesn't win elections, and that is its purpose. It is a public institution. And so we made those arguments, we passed rules, we won internal votes to get our rules passed. But that wasn't a personalised thing against anybody.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jewish members felt uncomfortable about being in the Labour Party, were victimized inside the Labour Party. And we had to, we had to be very, very focused on getting it out. And that meant taking out the kind of organizations that were supporting it, suspending people, passing the rules that were necessary. And I was very comfortable why we had to do that. Labour Party was morally broken on that issue. That wasn't about focusing on the left. That was about focusing on anti-Semites and anti-Semitism within their own party. So that was important. I think the second thing that was important was that the Labour Party had, and it's worst, it can do this. It had become focused on itself rather than a country, and we needed to reorientate the party to be laser-like focus on the voters, because when it's not, it doesn't serve people, it doesn't serve people in government, it doesn't serve people.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, there were two things we wanted to do when Kier became leader. The first was we had to, we had to drive anti-Semitism out of Lay Party. The Labour Party had got into a very bad place Morley on anti-Semitism.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you want to motivate people, you want to make people feel good about what they're doing, you want to give people a sense of clear purpose about what we're trying to achieve Is the far more effective way of being successful in politics than trying to engineer fear. And so I don't think it's healthy to do that.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that wasn't the case. I think part of that is because of what people read in a newspaper rather than who I was or how I conducted myself. But in politics, you have to, especially when you're managing campaigns and you're in rules like Chief of Staff, you have to be able to make firm decisions. Sometimes people do lose their job when things go wrong. You have to be clear about what you think, what you believe, what you think is the right way forward. You have to always try to do the right thing. And I think that giving the organization that you manage a clearer sense of direction is a very important thing. But engineering fear doesn't really help.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't my experience of working on a pretty good working relationship with ministers, spads, civil servants. I never tried to create any sense of fear. I tried to create collaborative working environment.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was in the job, I didn't really read much of the media coverage of me because it felt like reading about somebody who had the same name as you, but who wasn't you. And it didn't really bother me or didn't really matter to me that much because the people who knew me knew who exactly who I was and I was able to do my job didn't really interfere with how I was doing my job But when I left and I started to meet new people, get interested in new areas and meet people for the first time, new people for the first time in six years, repeatedly people were saying to me, you're not who I expect you to be. And I thought that was very strange.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Need to move on to a new chapter in my life and to do that need to close the old one and to make clear that that's happening. Loved working for Labour Party and for Labour government. It was an incredible privilege. I loved managing election campaigns. And that means that you don't have a public voice and you should not be a visible character. That didn't work out well for me. I became more and more visible the longer I stayed in the job. But I thought I needed to kind of become a bit more public to let people know who I am and to close a chapter under past.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The machine. But early in 2024, when we were preparing for the general election, when we were sitting down, I was sitting down with Pat Matt Fadden windowless rooms hour after hour, planning for day one. I did start to realize that we hadn't done enough to prepare for government and then we got exposed for that, I think, early.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The time in opposition went quickly. And you're right, when Kira became leader in 2020, one of the hardest things to do was to persuade people that we could win. And the narrative and the analysis was that it would take us a very, very long time. It would take at least two terms. And the Labour couldn't win the next election, which made it difficult to raise money. It made it difficult to recruit staff. It made it difficult to get people to be focused on the voters that we needed to win an election. And so instead of planning for victory, quite a lot of people said we need a we need a plan for defeat. So because we were at Labour Party, we had options about how to lose. So we could either have a 10-year plan. It was quite often was put to me. Kier would need a 10-year plan. But if we had said to the Labour Party, we're going to have a 10-year plan to get back into government. Everyone would have loved it because they'd have thought, well, that's great. We don't need to do anything for nine years or 11 months, three weeks. Or KER could be like Neo Kinnock and some Tony Bear character would come along. So it was very hard to get people to focus on what we needed to do to win to begin with. And then once we started getting into 2022, 2023, it was about building...”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that we didn't prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to be in. We're now at 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. And so people are frustrated. And to understand enough about the mood of the country, because people talk a lot about voters are not patient. It's not patience they lack. It's time. They've waited a very long time to get changed. They keep getting promised and they haven't seen it being delivered. So you have to deliver quite quickly for people, for them to see the change quickly. And I think we didn't come in with enough of a theory about how we would do that and why that was important.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think for me, one of the main lessons, well, some of the main lessons are preparation is far more important to strategy when it comes to just about any aspect of politics. I think politics moves a lot faster these days. It moves faster than the institutions that govern it are ready for. And I think you don't have enough time to get it right. You have to start delivering for people very quickly. You run out of political capital soon. So it's disappointing end, but I wouldn't have swapped it for the world.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Still processing it all to be honest with you. I haven't worked it all through. It's very sad. I couldn't watch all of his press conference because I found it quite sad. I thought he went with great grace. Think about the privilege it was as well how to go through those six years with him to be in amazing situations where you're in the room, the country's been changed, winning elections.”
2026-07-02 · Political Thinking with Nick Robinson · What went wrong for Starmer: Morgan McSweeney gives his side of the story · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source