“A deception without precedent in British politics”
JVL Introduction
Mike Phipps has done us a favour by taking the trouble to read this book, a follow up to Maguire and Pogrund’s “sniggering gossip-column” style take on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, Left Out.
The publisher’s blurb says of their new effort: “Drawing on unrivalled access throughout the party and extensive leaks of internal party documents and WhatsApp messages, Get In shows how together they [Keir Starmer and his Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney] betrayed and marginalised Corbyn and his followers, then forged a path in which promises, and at times principles, were readily discarded in pursuit of power.”
Phipps was unimpressed by the authors’ “credulity for the propaganda put out by Corbyn’s opponents” in the earlier book. Similarly he says Get In “for all its claims to be an exposé…is often curiously ‘on message’, repeatedly presenting the leadership view…” However it has a lot to tell about McSweeney’s role in Starmer’s rise to the Labour leadership and subsequent rapid political shift to the right. Maguire and Pogrund call him “the mastermind of a deception without precedent in British politics.”
NWI
This article was originally published by Labour Hub on Sat 5 Apr 2025. Read the original here.
A one-sided view of the rise of Keir Starmer and his courtiers
Mike Phipps reviews Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer, by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund, published by Bodley Head.
Loading article text…
Starmer was a creature of the Right before he became an MP – his record as a Constituency MP in Holborn & St. Pancras is appalling (and it’s a CLP dominated by the hard Right, who installed him). His rise was plotted and sponsored by every Right grouping in the Party and his lies (and silence), from Day One, were part and parcel of their strategy. It’s possible, even likely, that Starmer was their useful idiot but he was content to go along with them. Follow the money – his financial backers illuminate his politics – the rest is gossip ….. one of the grimmest aspects of Starmer’s rise was the willingness of those in the centre and soft Left to endorse him. He was being spoken of as Labour’s future even before Corbyn became leader
Analysing the history of how the LP – and more generally social democracy – came to support brutal racism and subversion of the rule of law is indeed interesting, but only if undertaken by someone who understands the irreversibility of that political process instead of just wringing their hands. Unfortunately Mike Phipps is not such a person.
May I suggest that when virtually the entire parliamentary Labour Party, with a mere handful of honorable exceptions, have revealed themselves as shamelessly complicit in the Gaza genocide, because they are either kenthusiastic racists, cynical opportunists, or cowards lacking any shred of moral fibre, JVL cease devoting space to such second hand tittle tattle. This is a party of mafiosi which is now wedded to oligarchic capital and is as grave a threat to humanity as either of its two ‘rightwing’ rivals.
Even if Starmer were removed, the Labour Party cannot be resurrected as a progressive force because the PLP and party apparatus are now de facto a protofascist party entirely divorced from the party’s evaporating membership. The task for the left is to destroy politically the remains of the party, and to deprive it of its trade union funding and of its remaining working class members. The latter must be recruited as activists in an initially extraparliamentary democratic coalition with a minimal agreed radical socialist programme with its own independent online information network, linked to similar international networks.
Starmer first showed his colours when he campaigned for Owen Smith’s Leadership challenge against Corbyn, after Corbyn had doubled the Membership and made the Party financially sound. Why would he do that, he’d only been an MP for a couple of years. It was a clear sign that he was not a Socialist and was in the Party to stop a Socialist Party from becoming the Government.
He gave 10 Pledges (all Corbyn Policies) to get voted in as Leader, he dropped every one of them.
I campaigned in my own Branch against voting for him but found it difficult to persuade all our members.
He’s gone on to be a Liar, a Fraud, a Dictator and a Traitor to Socialism and the People. The evidence is totally overwhelming.
I’m hoping that the Party has a disaster at the Local Elections, which causes him to resign. Though I have grave doubts that he would, he’ll make a number of excuses to stay in Power.
“A deception without precedent in British politics”
I am not sure about this. What about Neil Kinnock?