LONDON — Keir Starmer’s director of communications resigned Monday, marking the second high-profile exit from the British prime minister’s crisis-hit team in less than 24 hours.

Tim Allan, who previously served as an adviser to Tony Blair, was only appointed Downing Street director of communications in September 2025.

In a statement, Allan said: “I have decided to stand down to allow a new No 10 team to be built. I wish the PM and his team every success.”

He appears to have swiftly changed his WhatsApp profile to a picture of a golf ball with the caption “Out of Office. Gone Golfing.”

It leaves Starmer looking for his fifth comms chief since he took office in July 2024.

Allan’s resignation comes a day after Morgan McSweeney resigned as the PM’s chief of staff, having recommended the controversial appointment of Peter Mandelson as British ambassador to the U.S.

Mandelson’s links to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — and Starmer’s decision to appoint him to the key diplomatic post anyway — have come under intense scrutiny in recent days.

Starmer, whose authority was already dented by a rocky start to his premiership and poor opinion poll ratings, has been further weakened by the Mandelson scandal.

Addressing staff in No. 10 Downing Street on Monday the PM again stressed he regretted the decision to appoint Mandelson, heaping praise on McSweeney’s “service.”

He also issued a rallying call to colleagues. “We must prove that politics can be a force for good. I believe it can. I believe it is. We go forward from here. We go with confidence as we continue changing the country,” he said.

Starmer will address Labour MPs at a private meeting this evening.

Earlier Monday veteran Labour minister Jacqui Smith warned MPs and Starmer’s top team to stop plotting to remove him as British prime minister.

“One of the mistakes of previous governments that it’s pretty important that this Labour government doesn’t fall into is the focus on infighting,” Smith, who served in both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments, and is now an education minister, said. 

“That I think would be a mistake and I hope that my colleagues don’t pursue that particular route,” she told Times Radio.

The previous Conservative government cycled through five prime ministers in just eight years before being voted out of office in 2024.

Downing Street had hoped the departure of McSweeney — Starmer’s closest political adviser since becoming Labour leader, and a lightning rod for some lawmakers’ anger over the handling of the Mandelson scandal — would satisfy his critics.

But Andy McDonald, a member of the left-leaning Socialist Campaign Group of MPs, said Starmer’s “purge … of the left” needed to end, and the “Mandelsonian agenda” hadn’t worked.

“It has caused us so much pain and harm and it’s diluted who we are as a Labour party,” McDonald told the BBC Monday. “We really do need more of a clear signpost and not a weather vane.”

This developing story is being updated.