Frank Hansen unravels some of the inconsistencies in the story of Morgan McSweeney’s stolen mobile.

While there are serious allegations in Parliament concerning former prime ministerial Chief Of Staff Morgan McSweeey’s phone theft, there is no hard evidence as such that it was disposed of in another way.  However, there are a number of issues and questions arising from the incident that need to be clarified if the allegations are to be addressed. Simply saying “conspiracy theories” is insufficient. 

Is McSweeney capable of deception? Paul Holden’s book The Fraud alleges that he committed political deception on a planned and fairly massive scale. His failure to disclose Labour Together donations to the Electoral Commission was illegal.  Once this was uncovered (sometime later and after McSweeney had spent most of it on factional pursuits) LT claimed that it was due to an administrative error. LT were fined for this breach of electoral law.

Did McSweeney have a motive? Certainly he was a central figure in Mandelson’s appointment and knew him well. Concerning the phone allegations, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said: “Unfortunately, there are thefts like this. It was stolen. It was reported at the time, the police have acknowledged and confirmed that. That is what happened. The idea that somehow everybody could have seen that sometime in the future there’d be a request over the phone is, to my mind, a little bit far-fetched.”

But McSweeney wasn’t just ‘everybody’: he was central to the growing scandal and would be able to understand what might unfold a few weeks down the line.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said that Mr McSweeney could not have known that message exchanges would later be needed for scrutiny. But Mandelson had been sacked and MPs were asking why and how he was appointed in the first place.

Housing Minister Steve Reed, a close associate of McSweeney according to The Fraud,  claimed that the phone was stolen months before, Speaking to LBC, Reed said: “As I understand it, that was a theft that was reported months before the whole Mandelson situation even began.” He went on to say the report could’ve been  “even over a year” before the Mandelson situation.

The theft was reported on October 20th 2025, approximately one month after Mandelson was sacked. There were already stirrings in Parliament – including among Labour backbenchers – about Mandelson’s appointment and why and how it was made. As the PM’s Chief of Staff, McSweeney would have been well aware that an investigation into Mandelson’s appointment was quite possible and it would also focus on him as one of the key figures. Many MPs blamed McSweeney for Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US.

Following further email revelations about Mandelson’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein, the police launched a criminal investigation into Mandelson on February 3rd 2026. The following day, Parliament passed a motion, approving the release of documents about Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to the US, “after angry Labour backbenchers forced a government climbdown over plans to withhold some material,” as the BBC reported. McSweeney resigned from his post on Feb 8th

Phone theft by bike is of course a common occurrence in London. He retained his own phone and called the police. The call raises certain issues. A transcript was released by the police who were facing accusations that they did not take the reported theft seriously enough and that they failed to act.  After all, McSweeney was the PM’s Chief of Staff and his government phone would certainly contain sensitive and confidential information. In the interest of national security it would be important to investigate this fully.  

The transcript of the call indicates that McSweeney did not make clear the potential gravity of the situation to the police. He gave his name and address and indicated that it was a government phone, but did not state what his job was and how important it was. The call handler did not identify him as the PM’s Chief of Staff by his name.   

McSweeney said the theft happened in Belgrave Street, Westminster – a mistake which caused a certain amount of confusion, since the name of the Westminster location is Belgrave Road. The call handler checked with McSweeney that the site was called Belgrave Street, and then searched – finding a street in Tower Hamlets by that name, which became the official recorded site of the theft.  The call handler asked McSweeney about certain locations nearby – Stepney and Stepney Green Park but this only compounds the issue as the mistake is not rectified. As a result, the police investigation is treated as a ‘normal’ theft and focuses on CCTV in the Belgrave Street, Tower Hamlets area.

The Metropolitan Police has said it was not made aware of the “particular security risks” associated with the device. “This was not information provided to us and could not reasonably have shaped our decision making,” they said.

Further attempts by the Met to contact McSweeney (by phone) were not answered. In the original call, McSweeney was told he would be sent a copy of the provisional crime report by email and he said he was prepared to make a statement in support of the investigation. CCTV  (in Tower Hamlets) also did not raise any “realistic lines of enquiry.” 

The Met say they will now look into the location error to reassess new available evidence. Presumably they will examine CCTV in the Belgrave Road, Westminster area, which might help clear up the matter. In the call McSweeney gave a description of the assailant, said he chased him and indicated the direction in which he fled. He also stated that he had a tracker on his government phone. “I rang my office to get the phone tracked and then I rang you,” he told the police. It would be useful to know how his office dealt with this and what action that was taken.

Further suspicion was raised this week when journalist Jody McIntyre reported that “An ex-government adviser”  had confirmed that “meetings were held during the Autumn recess to discuss what to do if ‘they come for Morgan’s messages’.” One week after Parliament returned, McSweeney reported his phone stolen.

It is unclear what impact the lost phone will have on the Mandelson enquiry. The next phase of documents and exchanges are due to be released to  Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, which will assess whether releasing the documents would compromise national security. Officials are gathering communications, including WhatsApp messages and emails, from anyone who would have been in contact with Mandelson. 

A tranche of McSweeney’s correspondence is expected to be released publicly as part of the Mandelson files, but whether this will cover everything from his stolen phone is unclear, as is the question of whether there was a back-up procedure in place. The Cabinet Office are now asking Mandelson to provide messages from his personal phone as well as his office phone. One also assumes they will also ask McSweeney to provide messages from his personal phone?

It’s difficult to say how this will all pan out. Further clarification concerning McSweeney’s phone would be a start. Retaining information and evidence is very important, because beneath the Mandelson appointment scandal there are another set of serious issues that need to be investigated concerning the role of McSweeney and Labour Together in undermining Labour Party democracy, as alleged in Paul Holden’s book The Fraud.

 Frank Hansen is a former Councillor in the London Borough of Brent.

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