The Powell Paradox

An investigation into power, patronage, and the invisible hand guiding Keir Starmer's government

October 27, 2025

```

On the afternoon of September 5th, Lucy Powell MP was sitting in her Manchester constituency office when her phone rang. An unknown number. She knew immediately what it meant.

"Oh, this is me about to get the sack," she told her aides.

She was right. On the other end was the No. 10 switchboard, connecting her to Prime Minister Keir Starmer for what would become one of the most revealing conversations in recent British political history—not for what was said, but for what couldn't be explained.

Powell asked repeatedly why she was being removed as Leader of the House of Commons. Starmer's response? "I couldn't really offer a reason; he kept saying, 'It's nothing to do with you.'"

Seven weeks later, Powell was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party with 54.3% of the vote, defeating Starmer's preferred candidate, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. It's a remarkable political resurrection—from sacked minister to second-highest position in the party in under two months. But the real story isn't Powell's comeback. It's the question her trajectory forces us to confront: If it's "nothing to do with her," then who is actually making decisions in Downing Street?

The Man Behind the Curtain

The answer, according to multiple Labour sources, has a name: Morgan McSweeney.

McSweeney, Starmer's Chief of Staff, is the 44-year-old Irishman from Cork who masterminded Labour's 2024 election landslide. He's brilliant at winning campaigns. But governing, it turns out, is rather different.

Powell's crime wasn't incompetence—Labour sources told HuffPost UK she was "head and shoulders above" colleagues who kept their jobs. Her mistake was far simpler: she "clashed" with McSweeney. More specifically, sources said she was sacked for "standing up to [chief of staff] Morgan McSweeney and not taking his sh**."

Powell herself believes she became "a target" for doing her job—relaying MPs' concerns about the government's welfare bill to leadership. "It was taken as an act of disloyalty instead of actually trying to help us get through it," she said.

Read that again. A senior minister was sacked not for poor performance, but for communicating MPs' concerns to the Prime Minister. When the Prime Minister was asked why, he couldn't articulate a reason.

This raises an uncomfortable question: Is Starmer in charge of his own government, or is he simply the public face for decisions made elsewhere?

A Pattern of Peculiar Power

The Powell sacking fits an emerging pattern. Starmer has been notably absent from making difficult decisions himself. During the September reshuffle, he "delegated sackings" rather than delivering bad news personally—a move that "went down badly among MPs."

When McSweeney recently appeared before Labour peers to explain the government's direction, it was described as "a car crash in slow motion." One peer said: "McSweeney might be a good political campaigner, but he isn't a chief of staff because he's not getting things done. He just kept saying he noted our concerns and would report back."

Yet this is the man who appears to have the power to remove cabinet ministers—ministers the Prime Minister himself can't explain sacking.

The reshuffle particularly targeted the North West of England, with Powell's removal alongside several other ministers from the region raising concerns about "regional representation." Labour sources noted: "The list of executions in the north west is a massive amount for a single region. This is going to be a massive problem for No.10 and I suspect that they haven't even noticed yet."

They noticed. Or rather, the members noticed. Powell's victory is their verdict.

The Illusion of Promotion

Here's where the story gets truly Machiavellian.

Lucy Powell is now "Deputy Leader of the Labour Party"—a title that sounds powerful and carries genuine prestige within the party. But what does she actually control?

The brutal truth: almost nothing.

The Deputy Leader of the Labour Party is not the Deputy Prime Minister (that's David Lammy, appointed by Starmer). She has no government role, no ministerial salary, no policy portfolio, and no departmental authority. Her only guaranteed power is a seat on Labour's National Executive Committee.

"This is not a well defined job—especially given that it does not come with the role of Deputy Prime Minister—which is both a challenge and an opportunity. Lucy Powell can now shape this role as she sees fit."
— LabourList analysis

Translation: It's whatever she can make of it, which could be everything or nothing.

Powell went from Leader of the House of Commons—a real job with a £100,000+ salary, staff, office, and actual power over parliamentary business—to a party position with no formal governmental authority whatsoever.

She's been given a fancy title and effectively neutered. Removed from power but made to feel important. Classic political management.

Or is it?

The Soft-Left's Revenge

Powell has publicly stated she will not return to cabinet, preferring to remain "outside collective responsibility." This means she can criticise the government publicly without being bound by ministerial discipline—something her rival Phillipson, as Education Secretary, cannot do.

The soft-left faction that propelled Powell to victory knew exactly what they were doing. They've installed someone with a grudge, a platform, and the freedom to speak. Someone who was, in her own words, "furious" at Starmer's decision to sack her.

Powell's close alliance with Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester Mayor widely viewed as a future leadership challenger, adds another dimension. Burnham has been openly critical of Starmer's "London-centric" government and immediately endorsed Powell's deputy leadership bid after her sacking.

The deputy leadership contest was described by Labour sources as "a proxy war between Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham." Powell herself called this framing "sexist"—and she has a point about the dismissal of women's political agency. But it's also true that Burnham backed her, that she embraces his "Manchesterism" philosophy, and that both represent a direct challenge to Starmer's direction.

So the question becomes: Has No. 10 actually silenced a troublemaker, or have they created a protected platform for internal opposition?

The "Career Politician" Who Doesn't Understand the Term

Powell's political judgment warrants examination. During our investigation, a particularly revealing quote emerged from a 2015 Schools Week interview where Powell defended herself against accusations of being a "career politician."

Her defense? Pointing to Jeremy Corbyn.

"You could say that Jeremy Corbyn is a career politician because he's been in parliament for 30 years, and before that he was a councillor. He has only ever worked in politics. It's become a pejorative term that applies to anyone who is self-serving, and to be honest I don't think that any of us came into this line of work because we're self-serving."
— Lucy Powell, Schools Week, 2015

Let's parse this logical mess:

1. She uses Corbyn as the textbook definition of a career politician
2. She then argues the term is meaningless and pejorative
3. She distances herself from it despite working at Labour HQ (1997), as a parliamentary assistant to a Labour MP, for a political campaign group (Britain in Europe), and as Ed Miliband's chief of staff before entering Parliament

This is someone who wants it both ways—using a colleague to illustrate what a career politician looks like while simultaneously claiming the term is unfair. It's either intellectually incoherent or casually insulting to Corbyn. Possibly both.

Her CV speaks for itself: Powell has worked in or around politics her entire adult life. She stood for Parliament in 2010 (lost), was elected in a 2012 by-election, and has held multiple shadow cabinet positions. She is, by any reasonable definition, a career politician.

But more concerning than the definitional gymnastics is what the quote reveals: a willingness to throw colleagues under the bus while claiming victimhood herself. It's a pattern that would repeat in her deputy leadership campaign.

A Record of Blunders

Powell's political history is studded with embarrassing moments that raise questions about her competence:

The EdStone Incident (2015): As vice-chair of Ed Miliband's disastrous election campaign, Powell was "heavily criticised" for suggesting Labour's stone-carved pledges were "liable to be broken." She said: "I don't think anyone is suggesting that the fact that he's carved them into stone means that he is absolutely not going to break them."

The Sunday Times' Tanya Gold described her as "discredited" following the campaign.

The Russell Brand Interview: Powell arranged Miliband's interview with the controversial YouTuber—widely considered a "PR blunder."

Recent Allegations: Just days before her deputy leadership victory, The Guardian reported that Powell "urged ministers to reconsider costly legal proceedings against a property development firm in her constituency founded by a Labour donor." The firm, Urban Splash, is run by Tom Bloxham, who sits alongside Andy Burnham on Manchester's Old Trafford Task Force.

This is someone who never stops "banging on about 'Tory sleaze,'" as one commentator noted.

So we have a politician with a track record of gaffes, questionable judgment, and political self-interest now elevated to Deputy Leader of the Labour Party—not despite being sacked, but arguably because of it.

What This Really Reveals

The Powell saga exposes three uncomfortable truths about the current government:

1. Starmer appears to lack control over his own decisions

When a Prime Minister can't explain why he's sacking a minister—saying only "it's nothing to do with you"—something is deeply wrong. Either he's not making the decisions (terrifying), or he's making them for reasons he can't defend publicly (equally terrifying).

The evidence suggests McSweeney wields enormous power with limited accountability. He's not elected. He's not a minister. He can't be questioned in Parliament. Yet he appears to have the authority to determine who sits in cabinet.

2. The party membership is in open rebellion

Powell's victory, on a turnout of just 16.6%, represents those members engaged enough to vote delivering a clear message: they don't trust Starmer's judgment. They've elected someone he sacked, someone who promises to "speak truth to power," someone aligned with his most prominent internal critic (Burnham).

The low turnout itself is damning—down from 58.8% in 2020. Labour members are disillusioned, and those who bothered voting chose confrontation over compliance.

3. Labour has no idea how to handle internal dissent

Rather than address why MPs were concerned about the welfare bill, No. 10 shot the messenger. Rather than explain policy direction to worried peers, McSweeney offered platitudes. Rather than engage with legitimate criticism, they've created a system where challenging the leadership is treated as disloyalty.

This is "command and control" politics at its most dysfunctional. As Powell herself said in her victory speech: "Unity and loyalty comes from collective purpose—not from command and control."

The Bigger Question

Lucy Powell's journey from sacked minister to Deputy Leader isn't really about Lucy Powell. It's about a government that appears to be run by unelected advisers, a Prime Minister who can't explain his own decisions, and a party in which the members no longer trust the leadership.

Powell may have been given a "muffled" position—one with more title than substance. But she's also been freed from collective responsibility and given a platform to criticise. Whether she uses it to be a constructive bridge or a destructive force remains to be seen.

What's already clear is this: when your Prime Minister fires capable ministers for reasons he can't articulate, when an unelected Chief of Staff appears to hold more power than cabinet members, and when the party membership rebels by electing the person you just sacked, you don't have a competent government. You have a crisis of legitimacy disguised as a reshuffle.

Starmer came to power promising "changed Labour." What the Powell saga reveals is that Labour may have changed less than we thought—it's just found new ways to hide who's really calling the shots.

---