Over the weekend, the prime minister’s right-hand man fell on his sword in an attempt – perhaps – to save Keir Starmer’s legacy.

Personally, I’d find it a little difficult to commit political harakiri for 50p, the current street value of Starmer’s premiership. But Morgan McSweeney, the former Downing Street chief of staff, has perhaps made a different calculation.

I don’t want to completely deny the possibility of whatever passes for honour amongst the political class. But if you’ve been keeping up with the sordid machinations that brought Starmer to power, largely orchestrated, allegedly, by McSweeney, his Sunday resignation may be giving less “hats off” and more “rats off” – a sinking ship.

The big question now is: how long can Starmer last without his puppetmaster?

A clue: what do you call a fiddle without a fiddler? Firewood.

McSweeney may not have turned human flesh into meat pies. But by his own admission on Sunday, he appears to have encouraged the prime minister to play along as the exploitation of girls and very young women were factory-processed into blind eyes and porky-pies by the British government for political advantage.

Let’s be clear. McSweeney has admitted advising Starmer in 2024 to appoint Peter Mandelson, a long-time friend as a matter of long-term public record of the sex-trafficker and child abuser Jeffrey Epstein, to be the UK’s ambassador to the US, itself headed by a man repeatedly accused of sexual assault. And the prime minister took that advice.

Male loneliness epidemic? Not at the top. Since then, thousands and thousands of Epstein’s emails indicate a common hobby, played out in their penthouse suites, their private jets and on their islands.

Granted, they weren’t all publicly available when McSweeney told Starmer that his old mentor Mandelson was the perfect fit for Washington in 2024. All we had then were images of Mandelson shopping with Epstein in the Caribbean and watching the billionaire blow out birthday candles in his Paris flat.

Oh, and also a 2019 JP Morgan reportasserting that Mandelson stayed in Epstein’s New York apartment in 2009, while the paedophile was in jail on a child sex conviction. When the FT asked Mandelson about the connection just days before he moved to Washington in 2025, the paper was told to “fuck off”. Mandelson denies all allegations of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

Downing Street appears to have turned a blind eye to all of that. And despite emails alleged to show Mandelson passing on privileged government information to his “best pal” while a minister, some in Starmer’s cabinet continue to defend the PM. Almost all, though, have remained stonily silent, including those whose actual brief is the wellbeing of women.

Last Wednesday, Starmer was forced to admit that he knew about Mandelson’s continuing relationship with Epstein after the billionaire’s 2008 conviction on child sex crimes when he appointed him. Since then, women and equalities minister Bridget Phillipson doesn’t appear to have said a word. Jess Phillips, the minister whose entire job is safeguarding women and girls? Silent.

So it’s to his extremely slight credit that, unlike every minister of this government, McSweeney has publicly abandoned the prime minister. And to McSweeney’s shadier credit, his resignation announcement was telling.

“When asked,” he said, “I advised the prime minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice.”

You’ll have noticed two giant “ruh-roh”s in that sentence. According to McSweeney, his advice was invited, presumably by Starmer. And, also according to him, it was just advice. Which Starmer took.

Everyone with even a single brain cell in British politics has long known the sway McSweeney has had over our prime minister. Indeed, they’ll be well-versed in the allegations that McSweeney, behind an organisation called Labour Together, ruthlessly purged the Labour left to clear a path for Starmer, moulding the putty of the MP for Holborn and St Pancras into the hapless sing-along Blairite who rules today.

But putty though he may be, Starmer is still the prime minister. Some in the press are now demanding to know who else advised him in favour of Mandelson. It’s not a totally irrelevant question, but it’s also off to the side. Because didn’t the actual prime minister appoint him? Isn’t that all we need to know?

The real question is what remains of Starmer now that the puppetmaster is gone? It’s a pretty bleak image, the country’s top marionette, hanging limply from his strings, sadly waiting for his cabinet to finally wield the scissors and cut him down. The dimmer amongst them will be hoping that McSweeney’s departure will invite a little calm. But others will be calculating the reputational costs of waiting against the growing benefits of being first to end the prime minister’s misery.

Those benefits are set to swell even more once the wider public learns that Mandelson, now under police investigation, was paid a £55,000 golden handshake after being sacked as ambassador last year. It’s no wonder the PM’s allies are giving him just a 50-50 chance of surviving the week.

The barber of Downing Street may be gone. But the butchers will be on the move.

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