LONDON – According to the Whitehall grapevine, it was the moment that growing tensions between the two most senior men in the British Government finally exploded into the open.
‘‘You are supposed to protect me from things like this!’’ a furious Sir Keir Starmer is said to have bellowed at Morgan McSweeney, the man dubbed The Real Deputy Prime Minister.
‘That’s exactly what I was trying to do!’ McSweeney roared back.
The extraordinary exchange – relayed to The Mail on Sunday by a highly placed source – came after Sir Keir returned to No10 on Wednesday following his Commons mauling over Peter Mandelson’s links to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
No 10 denies the encounter took place as described – and even tried to deny that chief of staff McSweeney was in the country at the time, before backtracking.
However, what is not in question is that the Mandelson scandal has turned into a full-blown political crisis which could lead to the end of Starmer’s premiership.
Despairing Labour MPs are looking to Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham for salvation, with Lucy Powell running as his ‘proxy’ in the deputy leadership election.
Supporters hope Burnham will return to the Commons in a by-election, making him eligible for a leadership bid.
Even the previously loyal Guardian newspaper has turned on Sir Keir, writing yesterday that ‘an operation to dethrone Starmer is now under way’. In lines which will have sent a chill down the prime minister’s spine, the Left-wing paper wrote: ‘‘The question being asked in the tea rooms and bars and corridors of Westminster is whether Starmer is up to the task of finding the solutions the country needs.’’
‘Increasingly, the conclusion reached among MPs is: ‘No’… the doubt has set in. Not just that Starmer has shown a lack of political judgment, ideological vision, or – especially when compared with the charisma of Nigel Farage – personality. But that he never had it in the first place.’
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