UK

Sycophancy Writ Large

DECEMBER 30, 2024

Pete Firmin reviews Taken As Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party, by Anushka Asthana, published by Harper North. His review is followed by some additional thoughts by Mike Phipps.

Pete Firmin writes:

The blurb on the cover says this is “the inside story of the most seismic election in a generation.” Moreover, “In a world full of political noise, rhetoric and showboating you need a voice who can cut through that storm with authority, ease, warmth and intellect. Anushka is that voice: a masterful interviewer, and an utterly brilliant storyteller.” Wow.

Yet having persuaded myself that I should read it, I found it none of those things. On the contrary, rather than cutting though the noise, this is about as superficial a look at the election and its run-up as you could get.

Its treatment of politics is at the level of manoeuvring, of parliamentary games. Only very rarely is there any examination of  issues and policies. They are seen as disposable in the quest for power.

The author – deputy political editor with ITV News – is clearly in awe of Starmer and even more of Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s Chief of Staff, whom she sees as the architect of a brilliant election campaign.

While many pages are spent praising the “brilliant” electoral strategy of Starmer/McSweeney in concentrating their efforts on the seats they thought were winnable at the expense of larger majorities in seats already held, very little is written about the political strategy Starmer adopted since becoming leader of the party. Asthana writes: “Clearly Conservative decline was a major part of this story. But how had Starmer navigated Labour to a place which it could take such massive advantage of this political opportunity? Was his ‘Ming vase’ strategy the key?  It is certainly true that deeply restrictive fiscal rules designed to win back economic confidence prevented Labour from offering the radical edge of previous policies… But it is also clear that Starmer did what he did in order to win.”

No evidence is offered as to whether Labour would have won with those more radical policies rather than Starmer’s ‘softly, softly’ approach. It could be claimed, with much justice, that the Tories were so despised (and the SNP mired in internal difficulties) come the election that Labour would have won whatever its policies. “Winning back economic confidence” was more about winning the support of capitalists and their tame media than a strategy to tackle the multiple political crises of British society.

Quite what the ‘Ming vase strategy’ means has become clear since the election – essentially a continuation of the neo-liberal policies of the last 40 years, complete with austerity measures. While the two-child policy remains and Winter Fuel Allowance is means-tested, we are supposed to believe that the much-vaunted (and elusive) growth will eventually benefit us all, contrary to all past evidence. And, of course, Starmer’s claim to integrity rather lies in tatters after all the freebies he has received.

Asthana claims to see something very different to Ming vase caution, but rather “an obsession about winning, a steak of ruthlessness and a willingness to take on significant levels of political risk”. But there isn’t a contradiction between the Ming vase strategy and an obsession with winning if you see a requirement of winning as getting the support of those whose interests might be challenged by more radical policies. That ruthlessness and risk-taking has been solely directed at those radical policies and their supporters.

Asthana can only look in awe at the efforts  of Starmer and McSweeney to ensure that the playing of the national anthem – for the first time ever – at Labour Party conference in 2022 went without a hitch. She reports that all were comprehensively searched and warned that any shouting would mean their passes being shredded and Unite’s delegation were moved to the back of the hall in case they showed discontent. But to Asthana this blatant manoeuvring is seen as a sign of Starmer’s brilliance, nothing else.

Asthana documents the fact that Starmer was thought of as a future Labour leader from the point he became an MP in 2015, with all the networking and glad-handing involved along the way. The manoeuvrings against Corbyn within the Parliamentary Labour Party, the calculating as to whether it was better to resign from the Shadow Cabinet or stay were conducted purely in terms of long-term personal advantage. She shows the work done behind the scenes –  orchestrated by the misnamed Labour Together – to groom a successor to Corbyn, and undermine ‘Corbynite policies’, as early as 2017 when Labour under Corbyn was leading in the polls. Asthana’s own prejudices are shown when she writes of Labour Together “bringing together a wide span of credibility” shown, in her view by the ‘moderate’ Steve Reed, which is not how the left in Lambeth, where Reed was previously Council leader remember him.

The claims of antisemitism within the Party are merely mentioned in passing, with not one word spent on examining their truth. When she mentions Starmer welcoming Luciana Berger back into the Party, she simply repeats his claim that this was a sign of his “zero tolerance for antisemitism”. No questioning, no look at how little Berger’s claims of antisemitism stand up to scrutiny, just blind acceptance of Starmer’s narrative.

Asthana maps out the political career of Morgan McSweeney. “the Morganiser” in her words,  clearly seeing him as the mastermind behind Starmer becoming PM. Yet what comes though is a ruthless desire to win devoid of any politics beyond Labour tribalism. That ruthlessness and desire to be top dog has been more than illustrated by the way Sue Gray was pushed out post-election.

The ditching by Starmer of the policy pledges he made when getting elected as Labour leader  is just seen as the norm of the political game rather than something which might raise a few (!) doubts about Starmer’s integrity.

Asthana accepts people telling her what a kindly bloke Starmer is. Someone prepared to question a little more might have mentioned the failure of Starmer to give the slightest support to Apsana Begum through her troubles at the hands of her ex-husband, or how the treatment of Diane Abbott indicated the opposite. Starmer’s failure to insist that Abbott be called to speak when the Commons discussed Frank Hester’s comments about her showed just how unsupportive he is.

The Forde report and its condemnation of the behaviour of many Labour staffers towards Abbott and others and Starmer’s determination to track down those who leaked the document rather than deal with the issues it exposed are seen as irrelevant. And, following his notorious claim that Israel has the right to cut off food, electricity and water to the population of Gaza, despite his backtracking, not once has Starmer expressed his horror at what Israel is doing.

Some issues barely get a look in, so irrelevant are they to Asthana’s ‘forward march of Starmer’ view. They include the well-documented undermining of the 2017 Labour election campaign by Party staffers, the level of discipline imposed on MPs previously unheard of even under Blair, the questioning of some selection outcomes by the likes of Michael Crick, hardly a friend of the left,  the parachuting of favourite sons and daughters into safe seats with no democratic involvement from local members, and much more. An inquisitive journalist might have been tempted to ask why Starmer, who made so much of the EU issue and a second referendum (which many blame for undermining Corbyn), is reluctant to even mention the EU at a time when Brexit has been shown to be a disaster.

Asthana does mention how shallow Labour’s victory was in the general election and how Reform taking Tory votes assisted considerably. But she barely goes near the issue already shown in Council elections – that sticking to the ‘Ming vase’ strategy of not addressing real challenges can only benefit Reform further.

For those of us who see politics as more than the manoeuvrings for position in Westminster, this book is further proof of how much of the prevailing narrative we have to kick against, but also an indication of how – dangerously – out of touch the establishment is with people’s real concerns.

If this book has any value, it’s not in any insight it provides into Labour’s election victory, but rather in showing how shallow mainstream political journalism is.

Mike Phipps adds:

When she’s not desperately trying to be funny on Have I Got News For You, Anushka Asthana is co-presenter of ITN’s flagship political discussion programme Peston. He describes her book as “unmissable”. Others will reach a different conclusion.

If you can get beyond the breathless style (“As we sped towards the studio, I was almost shaking with nerves”), this book is perhaps more revealing than it intends to be. It underlines how obsessed Keir Starmer and his staff were with Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters and the extent to which they defined themselves in relation to them. Thus for them, the most important thing for them about singing “God Save the King” at Labour’s 2022 Conference was Jeremy Corbyn’s reaction to it.

Likewise Asthana lets the cat out of the bag when discussing Starmer’s factional takeover of Party bodies. The introduction of the Single Transferable Voting system in the election of the constituency section of the National Executive Committee was, she admits, entirely about fixing the vote in favour of the Party’s right, and nothing to do with improving internal democracy, as we said at the time.

The book runs to over 300 pages but has fewer than four pages of footnotes. So a lot of its assertions are not supported by anything as crude as factual references. This allows the author to peddle some clever if nasty smears, such as the suggestion that one of the motives for the attempted coup against Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in 2016 was that it had not responded empathetically enough to the murder of Jo Cox by a far right extremist during the Brexit campaign. It seems we must take Asthana’s word  for that.

Insofar as this book of surface descriptions has one, its central thesis is that, thanks to Morgan McSweeney, Starmer won by getting Labour to focus on the central concerns of voters – as opposed to those of members or affiliated unions. Of course, McSweeney’s political instincts were not so hot when he backed Liz Kendall for the Party leadership in 2015: she came fourth out of four.

The implication is that Keir Starmer wanted to win the general election above all, whereas the left… wasn’t that bothered. Once the idea is stated as baldly as this, it can be seen for the absurdity it clearly is.

But to pursue this idea a bit further, responding to the main concerns of voters will pose some interesting dilemmas for the Party leadership. Kemi Badenoch has already attacked Keir Starmer for not making immigration one of his pledges unveiled at the government’s recent relaunch. As Phil Burton-Cartledge points out, this book writes up Morgan McSweeney’s belief that “the Tories lost because they didn’t keep their promises about immigration. McSweeney also blames this for the retreat of the centre left cross Europe and why the extreme right are on the march. Where the centre left does well, with Denmark’s Social Democrats as his poster child, it’s where there are tough entry requirements on the borders and immigration is falling.”

But the idea that there are lots of votes for Labour in cracking down on immigration is flawed. For Labour to go down this route would be electorally disastrous – as well as political unprincipled. Immigration may be the top issue for Reform and Tory voters, but it’s joint seventh for Labour voters.

Recent research from Compass suggests that Labour Together, the centre-right group that controls the Party apparatus, got it wrong when it claimed the greatest electoral threat to Labour comes from parties to its right. Polling carried out for the report said of those who voted Labour in July, more than twice as many would consider moving to a party on the left than to one on the right.

On this basis, Labour’s refusal to get rid of the two-child benefit sanction or its means-testing of winter fuel payments will be far more damaging than any perception of being ‘soft’ on immigration.

Asthana’s book doesn’t really analyse at this level. Gushing on about Keir Starmer’s “laser-like” focus, or how after a Rachel Reeves Conference speech, “the hall rose to its feet, as hands slammed together,” much of it feels as though it were written by the Labour leadership’s communications team.

This partisanship gets more serious as the 2024 general election approaches. The author sems to accept at face value the leadership’s justifications for tightening up the requirements for candidate selection but glosses over the Rochdale by-election debacle earlier this year when the Party had to disown its own candidate after a recording of him emerged saying Israel had let the 7th October attacks by Hamas go ahead as a pretext to invade Gaza. 

On the general election itself, there is some coverage of the failed attempts to block the candidacy of Diane Abbott in Hackney North, but nothing on the factionally motivated ousting of Faiza Shaheen in Chingford or sitting MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle in Brighton.

The overall vibe of this book is gossipy, which will appeal to some – but also shallow. The author seems to accept unchallenged, for example, Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ apparent shock and fury at her discovery of a £22 billion black hole in the Treasury’s finances, despite being repeatedly warned about the possibility before taking office.

The problem with such superficiality is that things can go out of date rather quickly. The book plays down the differences between Morgan McSweeney and Sue Gray at the heart of the Number Ten operation, yet within days of its publication, Gray would be very publicly ejected from the corridors of power by Starmer’s Chief of Staff.

And now? Lets’ hope the strategists around Starmer are still as ruthless about wining as Asthana thinks they are. With the Party plummeting in the polls and losing by-elections left, right and centre, it will need all the “laser-like focus” it can get.

Pete Firmin is a retired postal worker and now-expelled, former Chair, of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP. Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.