Peter Mandelson → Pat McFadden (then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster) WhatsApp, 16–17 August 2025
Mandelson: I am going mad with the things Morgan is sending me. I am trying to be constructive but I just don’t know what to say anymore.
McFadden: He hasn’t sent me anything. Speak tomorrow?
Mandelson: It’s about a whole new (additional) political strategy team in No10 and the equivalent of the Rand corporation outside it to reverse national decline. I am flying back from Chicago to DC in the morning.
Mandelson: Can you connect with Morgan today and see how he is? I am on delayed flight from Chicago. Have the whole team arriving tomorrow including Morgan.
McFadden: Yes of course. I see Keir will now be at WH meeting with Z.
Mandelson: Yes. Morgan is coming with him. The media prep is interesting. Completely reductionist for Keir. Want to avoid any encounter with journos that might involve him answering a question. No sense of opportunity for personal projection. Just avoid all risk. Always the same.
Mandelson: They/he have no confidence
McFadden: I spoke to him. It’s a bit of a whirlwind. This external strategy unit idea has come from a lack of belief that good people will come in to number 10 and it’s hard to get the bad ones to leave.
McFadden: I’m going to see him when he comes back.
Mandelson: I told him he needs an instrument/entity to recruit top people but I fear he is using excuse to keep people because he knows Keir won’t fire them.
Desperate McSweeney tried to hire his own people to externally run No10 because the personnel were bad and Starmer would not fire them…
Tom Baldwin, author of Starmer’s hagiography, spoke to Times Radio:
Tom Baldwin: “I think he’d like to do something. He’s very dutiful and driven by service. That’s why he came into politics. I think that’s characterised his time as prime minister. He hasn’t always sought popularity or been good at being popular. But I think he has some of the necessary qualities that we actually do want in a prime minister. That resilience, that relentlessness, that ability to carry the weight and the job really does weigh very heavily on people and he carries that weight very, very well.”
Jo Coburn: “NATO Secretary-General?”
Tom Baldwin: “I think that’s something that he would be interested in. I think it probably requires Andy Burnham’s government to support him in that and these are some of the questions which Andy Burnham has to resolve quite quickly.”