Morgan McSweeney may be out of office – but he is certainly not out of the headlines. A mystery concerns the ex-No. 10 chief of staff’s phone, amid ongoing Tory pressure to release the so-called ‘Mandelson files’: all the messages relating to the appointment of the (now former) US ambassador. The Sun reported on Saturday that McSweeney’s phone was nicked on 20 October – days after Labour officials began to worry that a motion would be put to parliament demanding the release of McSweeney’s messages to Mandelson. As one put it to Steerpike’s colleague Tim Shipman: ‘If the Tories pass a humble address motion, Morgan is fucked.’
It seems quite extraordinary that the Downing Street chief of staff – the second most powerful man in the country – had his phone stolen with so little hullabaloo. Journalists have now been putting in phone calls to the Metropolitan Police, asking what investigations they undertook about this matter back in October. Given the security sensitivities of this matter, you might have thought Plod would be all over it. Far from it, with the Met officially concluding ‘Nothing to see ‘ere guv’. But, under pressure, London’s finest have today been forced to U-turn, issuing the following statement:
On Monday, 20 October police received a report from a man in his 40s alleging that his phone had been snatched. The incident was recorded as having taken place in Belgrave Street, E1. A review of the allegation, including a consideration of whether there was available CCTV, did not identify any realistic lines of enquiry. The investigation was subsequently closed. In the course of responding to a recent media enquiry, we became aware that the address was entered incorrectly at the time of the initial call and should instead have been recorded as Belgrave Road, Pimlico. Having identified this error, the report will be amended and the assessment of whether there is available evidence revisited.
So, er, the address was entered incorrectly and registered in a completely different part of town? Jolly good. It all smacks of that most ignoble of Whitehall traditions: a classic SW1 cover-up, designed to stop the McSweeney-Mandelson messages from ever being published. Don’t expect the Met to get to the bottom of it any time soon…
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