The Labour Party under Starmer

You may have played that game when you are asked which three or four people, living or dead, you most would like to have dinner with.

Former British prime ministers Winston Churchill and Boris Johnson are likely to be frequent choices, less so the current occupant of 10 Downing Street, Sir Keir Starmer, and no doubt his political opponents would suggest that there might not be much difference between a living or dead Starmer, so wooden is his perceived personality.

However, the fact remains that he led the Labour Party to a spectacular election victory a year ago. On July 4 2024, Labour secured 411 seats in the general election, giving it a 174-seat majority in the House of Commons.

Get In describes how Labour under Starmer was turned from an unelectable left-wing, anti-Semitic political albatross into a well-organised fighting force that was able to sweep to victory. It did, of course, help that the Conservative Party had lurched from leader to leader, amid infighting, corruption, bungling, dishonesty and Covid rule-breaking.

It would be good to report that this book provides insight into Starmer’s politics and character, but much remains murky. Say what you will about lawyers, they are not all the dynamic firebrands we see in courtroom dramas.

Starmer went into politics after a highly successful legal career, where he served both as a director of public prosecutions and a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

He loves football, is a devoted family man, is highly ambitious and has a ruthless streak.

However, while Britain has seen Thatcherism, Tony Blair’s New Labour and Johnson’s clown act, there does not seem to be the same evangelical Starmer-ism, the same clear political conviction and agenda that we have seen in some of his predecessors.

“So much of what has unfolded under Starmer’s leadership departs so dramatically from what he has said publicly and privately at any given point in these five years that even the people who have worked at his right hand in opposition and government question whether he can truly be described as a leader,” authors Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund suggest in a damning indictment of their subject’s political credentials.

Both authors are political journalists and have clearly enjoyed extensive access to the key players who carried out the transformation of the Labour Party and propelled Starmer into Downing Street.

Most of the credit goes to Irish political strategist Morgan McSweeney, who has served as the right-hand man to the Labour leader and is now his chief of staff. His campaigning skills, his foresight in identifying and recruiting Starmer into the party leadership race, and the cunning tactics he used to displace former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn are narrated in great detail, often in the words of those directly involved in the actual skulduggery.

It was Corbyn’s failure to seriously tackle the anti-Jewish vein that ran through the party he headed that led not only to his displacement as leader but also to his subsequent expulsion from the party. More recently, we have seen Corbyn preparing to form a new left-wing political party, though branding experts must be aghast at his initial failure to decide on a name for the new grouping.

Get In recounts that it hasn’t all been plain sailing. Starmer came close to stepping down as Labour leader after footage filmed through a window emerged of him drinking a beer in Durham in April 2021 with a group of party workers. This was during the Covid crisis, when social gatherings were banned.

This incident was investigated by police, with Starmer claiming that the gathering was work-related and fell within Covid rules, and so was not a private party, which would have breached the guidelines. He said he would resign were he to be fined for breaching Covid rules, but he was cleared by the police, thus clearing his path to Number 10.

The book also extensively covers the rise and fall of civil servant Sue Grey, who was recruited as Starmer’s chief of staff in September 2023, when he was Labour leader, and then was given the same post when he became prime minister. However, she was too much of an outsider, fell victim to venomous infighting once the Labour government was installed in power, and resigned in October 2024 after it was reported that her salary was higher than Starmer’s. She was replaced by McSweeney.

The book ends with this transition, but in assessing Starmer it is also worth reflecting on Labour’s track record in its first year in power. The economy has not been robust, and there have been deeply unpopular decisions on scrapping winter fuel allowances for the elderly (subsequently reversed) and on new inheritance tax measures that have angered the farming community.

There has been a growing anti-immigrant sentiment in Britain, and Labour has seemed powerless (as were the Conservatives) to prevent the steady flow of illegal immigrants in dinghies who have been successfully crossing the English Channel from France.

However, Starmer has performed well on the world stage, repairing the sour relations with Britain’s EU partners caused by Brexit. He also appears to have done better than most others — notably Cyril Ramaphosa — in striking up a warm and constructive relationship with the volatile US President Donald Trump. Britain has still been hit by the new wave of US tariffs, but at far lower rates than those SA faces.

While Get In is well written and well researched, and gives an invaluable behind-the-scenes insight into the transformation of the Labour Party, it will not be for everyone. There is a large cast of characters, many of them the back room operatives who made the monumental effort to make their new reader and their party electable.

It is a very long book, and there were times when I was too frequently measuring my progress in ploughing through it, rather than being drawn into the narrative. However, it will be essential reading for those interested in the intricacies of politics, as it takes the reader through the remarkable transition of the British Labour Party.