The resignation last Thursday night of the UK’s transport secretary, Louise Haigh, emerged the next morning – on the same day that the House of Commons voted on assisted dying, which quickly nudged it from the headlines.
A feature of the saga that still stands out six days later, however, is the influence on the situation yet again of Morgan McSweeney, the enigmatic Corkman who is prime minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff. Allies of Haigh around Westminster were quickly suspicious of his involvement.
A bizarre sequence of events led to Haigh quitting her role, barely five months into the new Labour government.
In 2013, the Sheffield native was mugged on a night out in London. At the time she worked as a public policy officer for the insurer Aviva, where her colleagues included Sam White, who would also go on to serve as a chief of staff to Starmer, when the Labour leader was in opposition.
It was reported that a man sidled up to Haigh on the street, slipped her handbag from her shoulder and ran off with it. She was a 24-year-old woman on a night out in the city; she said the experience “terrified” her.
Haigh, who had previously been a special constable (volunteer officer) in the London Metropolitan police, reported the theft. She gave police a list of items in her handbag, including her work mobile phone provided by Aviva.
She said she later discovered her work phone had not, in fact, been stolen but had been in a drawer at home all along. Haigh has admitted she made a mistake by not immediately informing police she had found it; Aviva had by then already issued her with a new handset.
Haigh acknowledged that police interest was piqued when she switched on the old phone. There were conflicting reports about whether she had previously also lost other work mobiles. Either way, she was called in for police questioning and on the advice of her solicitor she decided not to comment during interview. Haigh says she now regrets following that advice.
She was prosecuted at a magistrate’s court for fraud by misrepresentation by incorrectly reporting that her phone had been stolen, and in 2014 she pleaded guilty. Again, she argued, this was on the advice of her solicitor. Haigh said the issue was a “genuine mistake” and she received a minor conviction, which is now classed as “spent”.
A year later in 2015 she became Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley, and quickly made a name for herself as a rising star in the party. When Starmer became leader he appointed her to his shadow cabinet in the Northern Ireland brief. Her allies said she told him about the phone mugging incident and her subsequent conviction in full when she joined the shadow cabinet.
She was later reshuffled to shadow transport secretary and by the time of this year’s election, was leading the charge on the nationalisation of Britain’s railways – a central plank of Labour’s policy platform that excited the party’s core supporters.
Haigh, who stood out around parliament with her distinctive personal style and no-nonsense Northern attitude, seemed destined to remain one of the new government’s most prominent members.
Then news of her fraud conviction emerged last week. Her critics said she didn’t declare it when she was appointed to government, but it seems she didn’t have to as it was classed as spent. Starmer had apparently known about it all along, but the public didn’t. Somebody briefed the Times newspaper and Sky News and Haigh quit hours later.
Allies of Haigh have suggested Starmer was prepared to back her when the heat came on last week, but that McSweeney was not. It is accepted by both sides that she quit after a telephone conversation with McSweeney on Thursday night.
A curio of the story is that Haigh’s exit represents another poke in the eye for Sue Gray, the former civil servant who was ousted as Starmer’s chief of staff two months ago after a power struggle with McSweeney. Haigh’s parliamentary private secretary was Labour MP Liam Conlon, Gray’s son.
Haigh previously ruffled feathers in Number 10 in October by calling ferries operator P&O a “rogue operator” that she personally boycotted, and encouraged others to do the same. P&O’s parent company DP World was apoplectic and threatened to boycott the government’s flagship investment summit. It was dissuaded only after Starmer intervened.
That left a target on her back, along with her outspoken nature and her perceived closeness to the left tradition of the Labour Party that sees Starmer as an uncomfortable bedfellow.
Clearly, somebody close to the Westminster power machine took out Haigh. The irony is that her bill to finally pave the way for nationalisation of Britain’s train operators received royal assent last week. Haigh’s immediate usefulness to Starmer’s government was finished for now. Westminster is a dangerous, strange and murky sea in which to swim.