Keir Starmer’s director of communications, Tim Allan, steps down

Exclusive: Decision follows departure of chief of staff Morgan McSweeney over Peter Mandelson scandal

Tim Allan, Keir Starmer’s director of communications, has stepped down after only five months in the job, his resignation coming a day after that of the prime minister’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney.

Allan said in a brief statement: “I have decided to stand down to allow a new No 10 team to be built. I wish the PM and his team every success.”

The resignation is another blow to Starmer’s position amid a furious row about the decision to make Peter Mandelson ambassador to Washington despite his close links to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer addressed Downing Street staff on Monday to reiterate his regret at Mandelson’s appointment, while insisting his government could “go forward from here”.

A Downing Street spokesperson, when asked if Allan had been sacked, said it was the communications head’s own choice to stand down.

Asked if the the prime minister was going to resign, the spokesperson said: “No.” He added: “The prime minister is concentrating on the job in hand. He is getting on with the job of delivering change across the country.”

Allan, a former deputy press secretary for Tony Blair who went on to found the PR agency Portland, returned to Downing Street in September as part of the last shake-up of Starmer’s team, in which Darren Jones also moved to No 10 from the Treasury.

Allan replaced James Lyons, who had been director of strategic communications for only a year. Shortly after Allan arrived, Steph Driver, who was the No 10 head of day-to-day communications, quit after some concern that Allan had in effect been recruited above her.

Allan had been a somewhat controversial appointment, in part because of some of the clients taken on by Portland. But losing two senior staff members in less than 24 hours will increase the sense that Starmer’s Downing Street operation is in freefall.

McSweeney announced his resignation on Sunday afternoon after days of pressure from many Labour MPs, saying he took “full responsibility” for his advice to send Mandelson to Washington despite a relationship with Epstein that continued beyond the disgraced financier serving a jail term for sexual trafficking.

While allies of Starmer hope the departure of McSweeney will assuage the anger of MPs, the loss of the man seen as the architect of Starmer’s rise to power is a huge blow and has turned attention to why the prime minister himself approved the Mandelson decision.

Senior Labour sources have said McSweeney’s departure leaves the prime minister dangerously exposed as he heads towards a series of policy and electoral challenges – including the Gorton and Denton byelection later this month – that could determine his political fate.

In Starmer’s address to staff, part of which was released by No 10, he paid tribute to McSweeney and again addressed the Mandelson issue. “I have been absolutely clear that I regret the decision that I made to appoint Peter Mandelson. And I’ve apologised to the victims, which is the right thing to do,” he said.

“I’ve known Morgan for eight years as a colleague and as a friend. We have run up and down every political football pitch that is across the country. We’ve been in every battle that we needed to be in together. Fighting that battle. We changed the Labour party together. We won a general election together. And none of that would have been possible without Morgan McSweeney.

“His dedication, his commitment and his loyalty to our party and our country was second to none. And I want to thank him for his service.”

Citing policies connected to the cost of living, child poverty and NHS, he ended: “We must prove that politics can be a force for good. I believe it can. I believe it is. We go forward from here. We go with confidence as we continue changing the country.”

The Conservatives have attempted to keep the focus on Starmer. Speaking to the BBC on Monday, Kemi Badenoch said Starmer had allowed McSweeney to “carry the can” for his own decision.

The Conservative leader said: “Keir Starmer knew, he knew. It is his judgment and the fact that he has been dishonest, he was dishonest – he claimed not to know, then he changed his story and claimed that he had been lied to.”

Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, who sits in the Lords, told Sky News it had been McSweeney’s decision to leave. She said: “It was Morgan who thought about the position that he was in, and particularly, as I say, the extent to which he’d become the story, and decided that the best thing for the government that he had worked hard to ensure got into power was able to carry on doing the work for the country.”