The theft of the ex-Labour chief of staff’s mobile has raised eyebrows in the context of the scandal over ex-ambassador

Morgan McSweeney is not the first person to have had their phone snatched on a London street, but the fact he was at the time Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and that his phone most likely contained messages to and from Peter Mandelson, has prompted questions. So what do we know about the circumstances surrounding the theft of McSweeney’s phone?

According to McSweeney, in an account backed up by the transcript of his call to the Metropolitan police at the time, he was using his government-issued phone on a street in Pimlico, central London, just before 10.30pm on 20 October last year when a young man on a bike snatched the iPhone and pedalled off.

McSweeney also had a personal phone with him, which he used to dial 999. He told the Met police handler that he had called his “office” to get the phone tracked before phoning them. McSweeney said it was a “government phone”, but did not set out his job or where he worked, and the call handler did not appear to recognise his name.

It is known McSweeney called the police, and Downing Street says security teams there were also told that night. An initial investigation found no CCTV footage, but that was in part because McSweeney initially gave the wrong street location – Belgrave Street rather than Belgrave Road – meaning the Met believed he had been robbed in Stepney, east London. The investigation is now being revisited.

Two words: Peter Mandelson. McSweeney is seen as having been key to No 10’s decision at the end of 2024 to appoint the controversial former Labour minister as the UK’s ambassador to Washington DC, a move that backfired nine months later after the extent of Mandelson’s links to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein became apparent.

The controversy has reflected very badly on the government. McSweeney is – or at least was – close to Mandelson, and his phone would be likely to contain messages between the pair, potentially ones that could show up Starmer’s No 10 in a poor light.

And it is not as if the convenient loss of a phone never happens. The phone belonging to Rebekah Vardy’s agent fell off a boat, destroying messages potentially crucial in her libel trial against fellow spouse-of-a-footballer Coleen Rooney. And, closer to No 10, thousands of WhatsApp messages belonging to Boris Johnson and potentially relevant to the Covid inquiry vanished after he changed his phone and forgot a password.

As No 10 pointed out on Wednesday, the phone vanished in October, about four and a half months before a Conservative motion in the Commons that compelled ministers to release all Mandelson-relevant material.

It happened more than a month after Mandelson was sacked, and thus McSweeney might have had a sense that any messages between him and the disgraced ex-ambassador could become relevant. But at the same time, losing a phone should not mean messages can never be found – not least as they might be on the other person’s device.