MORGAN MCSWEENEY, THE Irishman credited with making Keir Starmer British prime minister, has been speaking to the media this week for the first time since he quit his government job over the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador to the United States. 

The Cork man came to be seen as the modern Machiavelli of British politics, for better or worse, but when the full extent of Mandelson’s friendship with the notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein became clear, it was obvious he had to give up his job as chief of staff. 

“Literally in the last few days I didn’t eat at all, I was drinking water,” he told the Financial Times when speaking about his final week in Downing Street.

“I felt guilty about what I’d done to Keir, to the party that I loved, the damage I had done. I had never felt that wretched. I thought ‘This is not OK, this is quite serious.’ I know how to cope with pressure but I was really angry with myself.

“This one, I thought, no, the only way this problem gets gripped is if I go. I wrote my resignation note on a piece of paper and I looked at it and I’m like ‘This is right.’ It felt good, actually.”

In an interview with BBC, McSweeney said that Labour did not do enough to prepare for being in government. 

“We didn’t prepare enough for what kind of world we were going to. We are now in a very different era than when Labour was last in government,” he told the Political Thinking podcast. 

“I think we didn’t have enough conversations at the top of the party about what that meant, how to prepare for it, what that meant for the state,” he said.

“You have to deliver quite quickly for people, for them to see the change quickly. And I think we didn’t come in with enough of a theory about how we would do that.”

He also told BBC about some less serious things, including his go-to Karaoke song, which is With or Without You by U2. 

“It took me a few years to realise that the subject of With Or Without You for me was probably the Labour Party,” he said.

Speaking to the Financial Times over take-away pizzas in a London pub, he said that even though the end of his time in government was “rough”, he wouldn’t change a thing. 

“The ending was rough for me, there’s no getting away from it, but I wouldn’t have swapped it for the world,” he said.

“If you had taken me back here 26 years ago and told me I was going to be drinking champagne with a French president, going to the White House, that I’d be in the rooms where we make decisions that transform lives… ”

When the interview with the FT wrapped up, it became clear McSweeney had bitten off more than he could chew when ordering an 18-inch pizza, which was left unfinished.

The same could arguably be said for his political project.