Sir Keir Starmer has been warned of a “fatal 48 hours” after the resignation of his Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney.

Speaking to GB News, Shadow Defence Minister Marc Francois said that the Prime Minister is in “very serious trouble” as the “sharks are beginning to circle” him.

Morgan McSweeney has resigned as Keir Starmer’s Chief of Staff after accepting “full responsibility” for advising on the appointment of Lord Mandelson.

In a statement, he said: “After careful reflection, I have decided to resign from the Government. The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong.

“He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself. When asked, I advised the Prime Minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice.

“In public life, responsibility must be owned when it matters most, not just when it is most convenient. In the circumstances, the only honourable course is to step aside.”

Reacting to the resignation, Mr Francois told GB News: “It’s extraordinary. The Prime Minister has now lost not one Chief of Staff, but two. He lost Sue Gray relatively early on, and now he’s lost Morgan McSweeney.

“So to paraphrase Lady Bracknell, to lose one Chief of Staff may be misfortune, but to lose two starts to look like carelessness. And I think it shows there’s now chaos in the No10 bunker.”

Reflecting on Prime Minister’s Questions earlier this week, he recalled: “If it gives your viewers some flavour of it, I was at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday where Kemi Badenoch was very effectively prosecuting, ironically, Keir Starmer, asking him very clear, very detailed questions, and she had him on the ropes.

“And when he said, yes, he knew about Mandelson’s links with Epstein in advance but appointed Mandelson anyway, there were audible gasps in the chamber. There was an intake of breath all around the Commons at that point. And then for the next 20 minutes or so, the Labour backbenchers just sat there in absolute stony silence.

“And I’ve been a member of Parliament, well, for 25 years in June, and I’ve seen a number of Prime Ministers come and go. And at that moment, with that gasp and then the silence got followed, I thought to myself, I’m not sure he can recover from this.

“And now we see the McSweeney resignation. So at the very least, the Prime Minister is in very, very serious trouble.”

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Asked by host Nana Akua what happens next, Mr Francois admitted: “It’s good of you to ask me my opinion, but what really matters in this context in the short term is what the Labour MPs think and what the Labour ministers think, because if a minister resigned, particularly if a cabinet minister resigned, that could be fatal for the Prime Minister.

“And we’ve already seen over this weekend a number of cabinet ministers effectively turn on him, Lammy, Rayner, all keen to say that they were against the Mandelson appointment. So it does look as if the sharks are beginning to circle.

“But there have been a number of Labour backbenchers in the week who’ve called for the Prime Minister to resign.”

He stressed: “Obviously Kemi has said that we’ve lost confidence in him, but what really matters now is what Labour backbenchers and Labour ministers do, and any ministerial resignations in the next 24 to 48 hours could be fatal.”

As Nana Akua argued that the current possible successors to Sir Keir are “actually worse” than the Prime Minister, Mr Francois was inclined to agree.

He said: “Well, I think one of the reasons that the Prime Minister has hung on as long as he has is because there’s been no obvious Prince or Princess over the water, as it were.

“If there were one very obvious alternative, I think he might bluntly have gone already. But but Labour MPs, I think increasingly don’t want him. But they don’t know who they do want and I can’t think of one possible alternative that is really very popular with the British public.

“Most Prime Ministers generally don’t want to give up, but I think when he blocked Andy Burnham at the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, I remember saying at the time this will lead to civil war in the Labour Party, and here we are.

“So that poisoned the well to some extent, and he’s now reaping the whirlwind of that decision. So the Labour Party are clearly not in a good place. If the Prime Minister does go, then they’re going to have to have some kind of leadership contest and that in itself, you know, could become extremely messy, couldn’t it?”