Special Advisors and their Factionalism – How to change unaccountable power?

‘It is almost impossible to find a clip of his voice.’ 

For many Labour voters who delivered the 2024 landslide, the reflections in Morgan McSweeney’s resignation statement were likely the first words he has ever addressed to them. In this regard, it seems strange that McSweeney managed to gain one of the most controversial reputations in contemporary politics. 

As an advisor, he was considered the ‘most influential’ but also the ‘most consequential’ figure on the left. As a strategist, McSweeney was credited with masterminding Labour Party’s historic landslide election victory in 2024 and yet, is blamed for the turbulence and U-turns which have come to define Starmer’s government. 

So why, then, could No.10’s unelected Chief of Staff exert so much influence, yet still remain unaccountable and largely unknown? What does this show about the UK’s party politics? And finally, how far does our current party structure strengthen democratic accountability? 

This commentary argues that the case of Morgan McSweeney, reflects a fundamental problem of unaccountable power in British politics. This problem is most potently embodied by special advisors (SpAd) with their control over party direction, have undermined the link between No.10 and their party as well as party and voter. While McSweeney should be praised in uniting the Labour party, over the long run, he has reinvigorated a factional politics, one that has only exacerbated the party’s deep divisions once in government. The result is a voter disillusioned with their vote, and an inefficient government hindered by internal division. 

Context 

McSweeney first gained significant attention as Director of the think tank Labour Together. With Labour having lost the Red Wall in 2019, the group set the strategic ethos that would guide his approach to 2024: to ‘peel away the soft left.’ To McSweeney and many Labour centrists before him, the ‘idealist’ Corbynites faction hindered the party’s chances at winning. Without them, Labour could contest the marginal seat, reclaim the red wall and win seats which it had never won before. 

The strategy worked, electorally. But as political scientist Rob Ford has characterised it, it resembled 'political Jenga': a manoeuvre that enabled Labour to win, but through a fragile coalition assembled by subtraction rather than integration. A party that wins by marginalising a significant merely defers confrontation. Once in government, this confrontation emerges, and now, following the resignation of Lord Mandelson, this has been detrimental to Labour’s capacity to govern as a unit. 

This conclusion points toward a structural fault in British democracy: inadequate statutory clarity governing what a special adviser is authorised to do. Not only is it in the minister’s interest to keep the role of their core advisors ambiguous to provide flexibility, but there is also inadequate means by which the public or Parliament can assess whether SpAds have exceeded their authority.

Problems of Ambiguity and Opacity 

Under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, Special Advisers (SpAds) are political appointees who act as temporary civil servants to assist ministers, providing a political dimension to policy and communication that impartial civil servants cannot. The fundamental problem is one of informal executive authority: though statute does not grant SpAds formal decision-making power, they frequently exercise it in practice. The ambiguity of the phrase 'political dimension' is not incidental, but rather, reflects how ministers are incentivised to keep the role of their core advisors ambiguous to provide flexibility. 

This was clearly illustrated by the circumstances surrounding McSweeney's resignation. According to senior Labour sources, McSweeney was the central advocate for Lord Mandelson's appointment as HM Ambassador to the United States. While plausibly within his remit to offer political advice on the appointment, the absence of any defined boundary to that remit makes it hard to pinpoint accountability. The result is a culture of opacity in government in which there is no gradation to the influence advisors can exert when it comes to appointments. 

This point on opacity can further be demonstrated by how ambiguity permitted the problematic methods used by McSweeney to ‘peel away’ the soft left. Allegations have been made that the aim of Labour Together was to purge the party of the elements it disliked. Paul Holden’s book The Fraud: Keir Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy alleged that Labour Together paid the PR firm APCO Worldwide to spy on journalists critical of Keir Starmer. These included reporters from The Sunday Times, The Guardian and Declassified UK. Though this claim is conjecture, the principle remains significant. Firstly, without formal record of their authority or its limits, accusations toward SpAds cannot be properly assessed. Also, McSweeney’s style of operation has arguably set an autocratic precedent. Rather than integrating, he undermined a fundamental faction of the Labour party, presenting Keir Starmer as an acceptable alternative to ‘persuade’ moderates to join in. The long-run consequences of this factionalism can be evidenced by the numerous backbench rebellions on welfare 2024-25. In light of Andy Burnham's bid to become an MP being blocked, this is especially poignant. Ultimately, when strategists are tasked with winning an election, the party can become their own political project, detached from the voter and rest of the party. This can significantly undermine good government if that party wins the election. McSweeney has shown this by enforcing a model for the Labour party that worked for the election but is now collapsing in government. 

Policy Recommendations 

The UK governance system relies on conventions, political culture, and ministerial honour rather than hard separation-of-powers structures. SpAds such as Morgan McSweeney can potentially exploit this flexibility. This commentary does not advocate for a wholesale codified constitution. It argues, more narrowly, that the intentions and functions of special advisers must be made clear to Parliament and the electorate. Two targeted reforms would achieve this.

1. Replace the current generic category “special adviser” with legally defined, functional types, each with clearly delimited political authority. 

   These categories would need to be drawn with sufficient breadth to avoid creating perverse incentives to game the classification. Additionally, a formal mechanism would be required to update categories as governing norms evolve, reflecting how SpAd roles change over time For example, in the case of McSweeney, this reform would have classified him as an electoral strategist and bound him from lobbying for Mandleson’s appointment. 

   
   

2. In conjunction with the above, introduce a statutory requirement that, for SpAds appointments the minister must publish: 
   

   a) A formal statement of decision rationale, - specifying which functional category the adviser occupies and the ministerial needs that appointment is intended to serve. 

   b) The basis on which alternative candidates were assessed. 
   

   The most significant objection to statutory reform of the SpAd role is that constraining advisers through legislation would reduce the executive flexibility that makes government responsive and effective. Ministers need to be able to deploy political expertise quickly and in ways that cannot always be anticipated in advance and so a rigid taxonomy may prevent this. 

However, the above policy recommendations are designed to target accountability rather than constrain flexibility. On a day to day level, these recommendations ensure continuity so that in practice much of an advisor's functions remain the same. The only difference is that they create a clear, written record against which an advisor's conduct can be assessed. In this way, voters, party members and backbenchers have a better understanding of the contributions made by advisors. 

Conclusion 

The problems illustrated by the case of Morgan McSweeney are not about him as an individual, but rather the structural conditions that permitted, incentivised, and ultimately rewarded his style of operation. The reforms proposed here are limited in scope but specific in purpose. They do not seek to codify the constitution or to eliminate the political flexibility that makes the SpAd role valuable. They seek, more modestly, to ensure that when an unelected official exercises significant power over the direction of government and party, there is at least a public record of what they were authorised to do — and a parliamentary means of establishing whether they did it. For a voter who could not find a clip of their strategist's voice until the day he resigned, these measures seem prudent. 

Bibliography

Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. 

Cabinet Office, Code of Conduct for Special Advisers (London: Cabinet Office, 2016, updated 2022).

Institute for Government, Special Advisers (London: IfG Explainer, latest edition).

Blick, Andrew, and George Jones, At Power’s Elbow: Aides to the Prime Minister from Robert Walpole to David Cameron (London: Biteback, 2013). 

Heffernan, Richard, ‘Prime Ministerial Predominance? Core Executive Politics in the UK’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 5.3 (2003), 347–372. 

Labour Together, Path to Power (London: Labour Together, 2020). 

Holden, Paul, The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney, and the Crisis of British Democracy (New York: OR Books, 2025).