Keir Starmer has reshuffled his Downing Street operation after Sue Gray resigned less than a week before his government’s 100th day in power. Who is in the prime minister’s top team now?
Morgan McSweeney, chief of staff
As the brains behind Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign, McSweeney is credited with having brought the prime minister to power. He entered No 10 as head of political strategy, in charge of charting the party’s path to another victory in five years’ time.
When it emerged there were rival power bases around McSweeney and Gray in No 10, few had any doubt he would survive any fallout. He has now emerged as chief of staff, with unrivalled influence, and is likely to bring a much sharper political focus to the job.
McSweeney is adored by many staffers, with some party figures retaining more affection for him than they do for Starmer. The highest form of praise in Labour HQ has been said to be: “Morgan loves it.” However, he is something of a bogeyman on the left after leading the thinktank Labour Together in a campaign to purge the party of Jeremy Corbyn’s influence.
After working in Labour’s attack unit in the New Labour years, McSweeney cut his teeth as chief of staff to the then Lambeth council leader Steve Reed, who is now a cabinet minister, and helped defeat the British National party in Barking and Dagenham. Born in Ireland, he divides his time between Scotland and Westminster. His wife, Imogen Walker, is Labour’s MP for Hamilton and Clyde Valley.
James Lyons, director of strategic communications
Lyons is hugely experienced as a former tabloid and broadsheet journalist who went on to big jobs in PR dealing with crisis situations, and boasts connections in Westminster among journalists and politicians.
Having worked for the Daily Mirror and Sunday Times, he became a communications chief for the NHS in 2017 and rose to a director job, helping the health service navigate the challenges of the Covid pandemic. He left the job last year to join the Chinese-owned social media company TikTok.
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Vidhya Alakeson, deputy chief of staff
Alakeson was Starmer’s director of external relations in opposition and entered No 10 as political director, running a team to help shape messaging, conduct research and keep the government on the front foot. Her new role as deputy chief of staff is likely to still be highly political.
She previously worked as deputy director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank and was the founder of a charitable trust, Power to Change, that supports community businesses.
Jill Cuthbertson, deputy chief of staff
Cuthbertson is one of the prime minister’s most relied-upon political organisers and gatekeepers. She entered No 10 in a senior role as director of government relations and will now be a co-deputy chief of staff. “She never drops a ball,” says one colleague.
Ninjeri Pandit, principal private secretary
Pandit is a former NHS digital executive who joined No 10 to focus on health policy. She became director of its policy unit and will now be the prime minister’s principal private secretary – a key civil service role. Pandit was once praised by Dominic Cummings in a blog as one of “the brilliant women around the table” who would have done the job of prime minister “10 times better” than Boris Johnson.
