When Keir Starmer‘s chief of staff fell victim to a phone snatcher last autumn, dozens of cameras were available to help police trace the thief and his highly sensitive bounty.
For, as the Daily Mail discovered yesterday, the busy thoroughfare that is Belgrave Road, in Pimlico in central London, is monitored by more than 30 doorbell cameras and other CCTV.
But potentially vital footage stored on those cameras is now probably lost. Because, after being targeted by the thug on a bicycle – who rode on to the pavement to grab the government-issued device – Morgan McSweeney gave the 999 call handler the wrong address.
That left officers looking for evidence six miles to the east – on Belgrave Street in Tower Hamlets, an area that is much less surveilled.
The PM’s top aide failed to tell the police of his high-profile job, or that the phone taken was likely to have contained the particulars of the entire Cabinet, along with details of confidential Number 10 business, so the case was closed when a trawl of the East London site turned up nothing.
The Daily Mail understands that had Mr McSweeney told police about his job when he reported the theft last October, both counter terrorism police and the Cabinet Office’s Government Security Group would likely have been alerted.
Due to his key role, police would immediately have dispatched officers to the area to try to establish whether it was an opportunistic theft or, more worryingly, a targeted attack by a hostile state.
Police would have been told, with haste, to check the local CCTV footage, including council, traffic and doorbell cameras.
Morgan McSweeney (pictured on September 23, 2025) gave the 999 call handler the wrong address – and failed to tell the police of his high-profile job, or that the phone taken was likely to have confidential information
Belgrave Road, in Pimlico, central London, where the phone theft took place last autumn, is monitored by more than 30 doorbell cameras and other CCTV
Investigators are in the process of checking whether any CCTV still exists of the theft (Pictured: A CCTV camera on Belgrave Road)
They could have scoured images captured by the number 24 bus, which was passing along Belgrave Road at the same time Mr McSweeney says his phone was stolen, according to its timetable.
But now five months on, much of that footage is likely to have been deleted due to strict data protection rules. Investigators are in the process of checking whether any CCTV still exists of the theft.
Last night it was reported that Downing Street did not report the theft to the intelligence services because government officials are banned from storing classified information on their devices.
But there are many levels below ‘classified’ that could embarrass Number 10 or be useful to an enemy.
Following briefings to the media, Scotland Yard this week took the unusual step of releasing a transcript of Mr McSweeney’s 999 call reporting the phone theft.
In it, he sounded flustered and shocked moments after the mugging.
But there are huge questions being asked of the Downing Street response, especially because Mr McSweeney told the officer on the other end of the phone his device as a ‘government phone’ had a tracker.
Had Number 10’s police liaison alerted Scotland Yard straight away, could it not have been tracked?
The loss of the phone also, conveniently say some, means the loss of messages with Mr McSweeney’s mentor, the disgraced Peter Mandelson.
Just weeks before, on September 11, Mandelson was ousted as ambassador to the US because of damning revelations about his relationship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
It had been Mr McSweeney that persuaded the Prime Minister to install him, despite the former Labour spin doctor’s scandal-hit past and his known association with Epstein.
Now locals in Belgrave Road are beginning to wonder what it is that insiders at Westminster are demanding that McSweeney clarifies.
As one gentleman who lives on Eccleston Square – a swish Georgian row just off Belgrave Road – puts it: ‘It is all a bit fishy.’
Belgrave Road was once a desirable street in Westminster lined with five-storey white townhouses designed by Thomas Cubitt between 1830-50s.
A short walk from Victoria Station, Parliament, and the Tate Britain it was inhabited by the comfortably well-off classes.
But the area is now a mixture of glass-fronted offices, budget hotels, multiple occupancy houses and hostels.
The Daily Mail understands that had Mr McSweeney told police about his job when he reported the theft last October, both counter terrorism police and the Cabinet Office’s Government Security Group would likely have been alerted (Pictured: Belgrave Road)
Perhaps because of this decline, business owners and the few remaining permanent occupants have installed more than 35 private cameras on Belgrave Road alone.
Mr McSweeney, 48, told police that he chased the mugger – described as a black teenager on a pedal cycle – for a few blocks until he turned left and headed towards a park.
There are no parks in the heavily built-up area – but if McSweeney really was in pursuit of a thief that cold autumn night – perhaps he mistook one of two private gated gardens as parks.
Both require a key fob to enter and are closed to the general public.
The first of these leafy wooden enclaves behind black metal railings is called Warwick Square. The residents of the square have installed 14 doorbell cameras.
A hundred or so feet up the road is Eccleston Square, where there are 13 doorbell cameras plus one traffic CCTV camera.
Police will finally be asking to look at what those cameras may still hold. But, having been sent on a wild goose chase initially, hopes that they will turn something up are slim.
