5 February 2025

“There is no such thing as Starmerism”

An account of the Labour Party’s rise to power presents the PM as a man with a deep aversion to politics and “vision”.

On the front cover of this useful, informative book by two Times journalists is a cartoon of Keir Starmer. This is, surely, a mistake: the book is far more about Morgan McSweeney, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and the architect of his remarkable general election victory last year.

Patrick Maguire is one of the best columnists of his generation and Gabriel Pogrund is a garlanded scoop-getter, so I mean no disrespect when I say they have chosen to “do a Tim Shipman”. This means, à la the Sunday Times journalist, they have painstakingly accumulated hundreds of hours of interviews with political advisers to produce as comprehensive a narrative as possible of Westminster doings. Shipman’s approving quotations appear twice, on the front and back of the book.

As with Shipman’s volumes on Brexit and the Conservatives, the deliberate impression here is one of uncanny omniscience – always in the room, around the table, inside the private WhatsApp group. It’s great fun but, unavoidably, it undervalues elected politicians in comparison to adviser sources.

The main narrative here starts in April 2019, when McSweeney – referred to throughout as “the Irishman” in Brooklyn gangster-movie terms – goes in to confront Jeremy Corbyn and it ends, after a handshake between McSweeney and Starmer on the morning of the election victory, with a “wordless understanding” between the two. In between,there are few pages where McSweeney’s presence is not explicit or hovering.

McSweeney is indeed a fascinating – and I think admirable – person. This book will be regarded as a first draft of the inevitable biography of this modest, steely, affable political streetfighter who emerged in Westminster from Cork to annihilate the Labour left, purge it of anti-Semitism, and create an electoral machine, ultimately wiping out what, only a few years ago, had seemed an impregnable Tory hegemony. In my lifetime, Labour has never had a political strategist to match the succession of clever fixers and tacticians hanging around Conservative Central Office (now known as Conservative Campaign Headquarters) – not until, that is, McSweeney showed up.

Beyond all that, he is, in private, a man of clear and passionately held principles. To hear him on the scandal of the grooming gangs, or the disdain of gender-obsessed metropolitan liberals for working-class voters, is to hear an authentic “Blue Labour” politician who should be out in front of the public.

One day, perhaps. In the meantime, the great mystery of this book is the politics of Keir Starmer. Early on, planning his leadership campaign in Camden, the authors note, “He declined to chair his own meeting… Starmer contributed tentatively to the discussions as if he was an invited guest and not the instigator. When he did speak, he spoke not of his political vision but of tedious bureaucratic process [and] preoccupied himself with the tedious minutiae of the how.” This is one of their main themes. Later, they quote an aide on the strangeness of working for a leader who doesn’t much like politics: “There is not a culture of political discussion with Keir. He doesn’t do group discussion… He doesn’t let people know if they are performing, or disappointing him. He is completely unreadable.”

Elusiveness haunts the narrative: there is an absence of what most of us would call “politics”. We learn a great deal about what Starmer is against – sloppiness, extremism, self-regarding and buffoonish Tories; and above all, losing – and there is a great deal of the “how”. He hates the vision thing, which is reasonable – but where, in the end, does he want to take us?

Instead we are offered, at length, the inside track on the manoeuvring before Jeremy Corbyn had the Labour whip withdrawn in 2020; the complex negotiations to fix votes before conference; how parliamentary candidates were selected; and the strategic role of internal party elections. We meet many people called Matt. We follow every twist and turn of the internal debates over calling for a Gaza ceasefire, as well as the bureaucratic battles over who will get which office before government.

The reader learns a lot. There is a great tale of the Russian hack of Labour phones, including those of the future defence secretary John Healey, Starmer and the man currently conducting the Strategic Defence Review, George Robertson, all routed via the account of the innocent and supportive journalist Paul Mason.

There are fascinating insights into rivalries in government today – Starmer’s anger when Lisa Nandy questions his character in the fight against anti-Semitism; Angela Rayner’s fear of death threats and constant belief she was about to be sacked. When she considered going for the leadership herself, key unions, we are told, “would have endorsed her platform of high-tax, high-spending Scandinavian social democracy; infused with a cultural conservatism of Blue Labour with tough lines on crime and immigration”.

We learn, in the aftermath of the “beergate” allegations in Durham, when it briefly seemed that Starmer might have broken lockdown rules and would resign as leader, that the chosen interim leader would have been John Healey. At the same time, we witness the rise of Rachel Reeves and her budding rivalry with Wes Streeting – one that remains very much alive today.

Maguire and Pogrund show how Starmer became a tougher and more ruthless leader, overriding colleagues, due to the fight over Gaza. The authors assert that, despite his vehement denials, Starmer bullied the Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, in a row about the SNP’s Palestine amendment, warning him that he’d get him sacked after the general election if he didn’t fall into line.

It is revealed that Starmer was in touch with Sue Gray long before it was made public, and that she was followed by a mysterious van once she decided to work for Labour. There is a devastating exposition of the case against her when Starmer arrived in government – a thoroughly reputation-shredding analysis, again very different from what was said at the time.

So yes, as Shipman says on the cover, this is certainly a book you need to read to understand this government – though “government” shouldn’t just mean the leader. The full story is also about the views of Streeting, Rayner, Ed Miliband and many more. It is well written and full of lively stories.

In the end however, I found it a deflating book published at a deflating moment. Starmer is a tough, disciplined, decent man who may well be able to stay the course. He would have been better served by a fuller account of his actual political thinking, and how he sees the better Britain he wants to build. In one uncharacteristic flash of irritation, Starmer insists: “There is no such thing as Starmerism, and there never will be!”

This reader, for one, hopes he is wrong, and that this is not the final verdict.

Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer
Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund
Bodley Head, 438pp, £25

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