Jonathan Powell, Keir Starmer’s national security adviser (NSA), has rejected overtures to become the prime minister’s chief of staff after the resignation of Morgan McSweeney, the Guardian has been told.
Powell’s allies say his decision not to take forward discussions about the job – the same role he undertook under Tony Blair’s premiership from 1997 to 2007 – was largely motivated by an intention to return to the mediation consultancy that he set up in 2011, with little interest in returning to a job he has already done.
He is said to be weighing a departure from Downing Street at the end of the year, in what would represent another significant departure from the prime minister’s senior team.
Downing Street sources firmly denied that Jonathan Powell had any plans to step down from his role, adding that he was not leaving Downing Street and would continue as NSA. They said any suggestion Powell had been offered the role of chief of staff was untrue.
Powell is credited with playing a key role in shaping Starmer’s policies on the world stage. The prime minister’s efforts to build a relationship with Donald Trump and act as a self-styled bridge between the US and Europe are seen as one of the more successful elements of his tenure at No 10.
In a continued Downing Street clear-out after the controversy over the decision to make Peter Mandelson the ambassador to Washington, it was announced on Thursday that Chris Wormald, the cabinet secretary, was stepping down “by mutual consent” after just more than a year in the job.
It is also understood that Powell very strongly advised Starmer not to appoint Mandelson as British ambassador to Washington, an opinion that could emerge in the publication of internal government memos due to be published after a Commons vote earlier this month.
Downing Street sources said they would not comment on advice given to the prime minister.
The mass of documentation, which ministers agreed to release after the controversy over Mandelson’s long-term links to the child sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, will be released after sensitive items are filtered by parliament’s intelligence and security committee.
Powell’s recommendation was not owing to any special knowledge of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein, but because he felt from his personal experience during the Blair government that Mandelson courted controversy and would represent trouble for the prime minister.
As Blair’s chief of staff, Powell had to handle two cabinet resignations by Mandelson and on both occasions felt Mandelson did not handle the controversy as well as he could have. His opposition to Mandelson underlines the extent to which Starmer and McSweeney ignored top-level foreign policy advice from inside No 10 and the Foreign Office over the appointment.
David Lammy, who was foreign secretary at the time of the appointment, has also let it be known that he opposed the plan, but he may have been reflecting a Foreign Office view that such a high-level diplomatic appointment should go to a professional diplomat and not a former Labour minister.
Powell has been regarded as a highly effective national security adviser, acting as a key liaison between No 10 and the European “coalition of the willing” built to support Ukraine. He has also been at the centre of the controversy over the decision to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
His consultancy, Inter-Mediate, specialises in working behind the scenes to bring together parties in a conflict. Powell always regarded the highly demanding national security job as a fixed-term appointment.
At Inter-Mediate, Powell – considered to have been one of the key architects of the 1999 Good Friday agreement – played a role in supporting negotiations to end the Basque conflict and demobilise the Eta separatist group. In addition, he served as a peace adviser to the former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos on his Nobel prize-winning settlement with the Farc rebels.
Powell also worked alongside Mozambique’s former president Filipe Nyusi to end the country’s long civil war through a landmark agreement signed in summer 2019.
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