Anushka Asthana ‘Taken As Red’ Harper North 2024 £22 reviewed by Larry O’Hara
This review originally appeared in the November edition of Labour Left magazine Labour Briefing: to subscribe visit https://labourbriefingcooperative.net/
This is the first book to cover Starmer’s victory in the election, written by an ITV political correspondent working for that cesspit of banal irrelevance the Peston Show, who was granted privileged inside access to Starmer and Labour’s High Command in the months before the election. This intriguing book is annoying and fascinating in equal measure. Asthana being fundamentally a modern court correspondent, immersed in the Westminster bubble, has two major disadvantages but one advantage, all on display here. The advantage, very important, is unparallelled access to the Starmer party regime’s higher echelons.
Asthana loves trivia about political leaders/apparatchiks that made me retch: who dates who, favourite karaoke songs, dietary and drinking proclivities (Reeves only has one glass of red since you ask). Though no marching powder it seems. Tittle-tattle extends to vacuous accounts of the Johnson/Truss/Sunak interludes, and we are treated to pages extolling how serious Ed Davey of the Lib Dems is. And absurd bigging up of those who provided her access: such as Campaigns Manager ‘Field Marshal’ Hollie Ridley and of course Morgan McSweeney (her palpable main source), who is now Downing Street Chief of Staff.
McSweeney looms so large in this book because, frankly, he appears to have the energy and drive a dullard like Starmer can only dream about. This is not to say he lacks ambition, but what Asthana repeatedly lauds as Starmer’s bravery is hardly that, but the lashing out of a petty tyrant and control freak. Unlike Harold Wilson: or even Tony Blair, Starmer lacks the mental agility to deal with opposition, hence his first and only instinct is to suppress: which Asthana deferentially praises as ruthlessness (p.25/27) although implausibly also alleging he is ‘caring.’ Well, he no doubt cares about free tickets to Arsenal matches, free glasses and suits, and his son studying for GCSEs in a quiet environment, but that is probably as far as it goes. Rosie Duffield MP’s letter resigning from the Labour Party, while seized upon by the right wing press, was nonetheless very insightful as to his character and lack of depth: it is telling that the best motivation Asthana produces for Starmer’s political interest is his parents treating both sons equally (p.92).
The second failing is that on key issues she sides with power not truth. The price of privileged access to those atop all parties is an absence of independent thought and criticism, which she achieves with consummate ease. Which can make her type look silly in short order, for instance her stridently denying there was real bad blood between McSweeney and the now defenestrated Sue Gray (p.298-99), the subject of earlier patently pro-McSweeney digs (p.198-99/231-2). Or how about this gem: Keir Starmer “has insisted that ending child poverty will be at the heart of this Labour government’s philosophy” (p.292)—which strictly speaking makes him heartless.
The quid pro quo of privileged access is deliberately downplaying facts inconvenient for the leadership, even if nonetheless including information contradicting their favoured narrative. She approvingly quotes one opinion McSweeney was battling the Blairite right as much as the Corbynite Left but in virtually the next sentence admits that in the 2015 leadership election he backed the most Blairite contender, Liz Kendall (p.59). Furthermore, Asthana parrots that there was an anti-Semitism problem within Labour (e.g. p.43/47/63) & quotes (without any evidence) McSweeney’s view “anti-Semitism was baked into the world view of the hard left” (p.64). Then goes on to recount how she was one of the Guardian journalists ‘schmoozed’ by McSweeney’s Labour Together cabal as part of the anti-Canary initiative (p.67) without of course mentioning the Guardian ranked alongside the BBC as the top two media outlets pushing the anti-Semitism smear. Asthana also has to concede Starmer never threatened to resign over the anti-Semitism ‘crisis’ he now affects to have been so concerned by (p.47). Former Labour Deputy Leader Tom Watson’s review (in the Guardian of course) describes this book as “richly sourced” (true) but also as a “balanced thoughtful narrative” (untrue). But in the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, he would say that wouldn’t he?
Having admitted early on Starmer has purged Leftists (p.24) she later claims ludicrously there was no purge, rather “in a way the aim was unity of ideas: they wanted to persuade almost everyone in Labour who was not central to the Corbyn project that the party could be rebuilt in his political wake” (p.63). Pol Pot probably said similar. I have no objection in a way to this, but what a pity the Labour Left have never to date been so ruthless. Asthana also covers for the Starmer clique on candidate purges (p.228), bullying Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle (p.230) and even Starmer’s filmed agreement with Israel starving Gazans by cutting off food and water, stating he only “appeared to suggest” such (p.230). On the contrary Starmer actually stated “they have that right” and for her to insinuate otherwise is stupid as well as despicable. Utterly true to form, Asthana recounts the Starmer version of Jeremy Corbyn’s expulsion as if it were fact, stating there never was a plan to kick Corbyn out of the party (p.122).
Thankfully, with the author an uncritical willing receptacle for Starmer clique outpourings, they reveal more than is wise. Thus, the news McSweeney is obsessed with the Leftist Canary website, organising a campaign to encourage an advertiser boycott (p.66-67) has led the Canary to consider legal action: good. Also, her itemising the duplicitous (she would say brilliant) methods used by McSweeney to undermine the Left from within (p.68-76/88-113) should be required reading for Leftists wanting to fight back when (not if) this government implodes. It is certainly possible to admire McSweeney’s strategy: descending on a ‘soft left’ Compass weekend school like a shark in November 2017 looking for possible marks: Momentum Organiser Laura Parker was one, Neal Lawson of Compass another (p.68), and former Corbyn staffer Simon Fletcher (who later realised he had been conned) yet one more (p.86).
There should be no doubt McSweeney and friends were/are indeed the ‘enemy within’—Asthana quotes one SWOT analysis where “McSweeney claimed one of the key problems the group might encounter was “a Labour government” (p.66). Indeed he began working for the new Trevor Chinn/Martin Taylor organisation Labour Together the day after the 2017 General Election. An astute commentator might have made something of that, but you will have gathered astuteness is not an Asthana attribute. Nor does she join the dots connecting Labour Together to the Israeli Embassy led project to undermine Corbyn so well chronicled by Asa Winstanley. Nonetheless, access to internal strategy documents does yield useful nuggets: such as the admirable summary that to achieve their aims “they would need to dominate the communication channels that party members most trusted; capture the political territory that the ‘soft left’ cared about most, for example social justice, and avoid the looming threat of sympathetic politicians facing deselection by a membership that had lost trust in MP’s” (p.71). All this is territory that if (not when) the Labour Left regroups has to be taken back, as too the National Executive Committee, including Constituency Labour Party representation on such. Helpfully, those name-checked here as Starmeroids should also be politically dispatched in an expeditious way:
So immersed is Asthana in the Westminster bubble that when on the stump she encounters people genuinely enthusiastic about Corbyn she refers to “an almost cult-like response to Jeremy Corbyn’s presence” and is genuinely bemused because “most people at these rallies did not strike me as being on the extreme Left of politics” (p.73). How myopic, seeing the world only through the lens of hackneyed media stereotypes. As for the Manchurian candidate non-entity Starmer, enough here to show this snake was de facto planning his coup against members as far back as September 2016 (p.38)—and waited precisely 20 minutes after becoming leader before telling Corbynite General Secretary Jennie Formby she was sacked (p.25). This puts in true perspective Asthana’s summary of his utterly fraudulent leadership campaign in 2020, that “the message to hundreds of thousands of members who had backed Corbyn must not be that they were wrong” (p.73). The Starmer clique patently thought so but were too dishonest to say so publicly.
Inadvertently, Asthana’s explaining the mechanics of Starmer’s victory also accounts for just how things have gone downhill so quickly since. Poetically summed up by Leadership control freakery aimed at ensuring a one-minute Conference silence after Elizabeth II died: which gets a full seven pages (p.13-19). McSweeney looms large in this book, his methodology for success (aided by Field Marshal Ridley) is essentially a confidence trick of finding issues electors are concerned with, and then to “focus on them relentlessly” using a “persuasion pathway” (p.51/222). Not to solve them (apart from garden rubbish), but merely ‘address’ them: these issues do not include what she concedes are popular Corbyn era policies like water/rail nationalisation etc. (p.113). Instead, Starmer’s media strategy guru Ben Nunn produced three words to hoodwink Labour members in 2020—Unity/Radical/Win—the first two already junked (p.76). The real question is what do you do after you win that might improve people’s lives? Not a thought that could occur to McSweeney, as ‘one source’ (the man himself maybe?) said of him “if something does not contribute to us winning…his brain is incapable of taking it in” (p.281). Usefully, she recounts the process by which Pat McFadden/McSweeney concocted the content-free election slogan ‘Change’ (p.231). Actual change for the better? Not really. The worse? Despite some positive aspects, almost certainly. This is the most egregious crime of Starmer, McSweeney Reeves and the rest: in the minds of most of the public we have a Left-wing government, and as it stands those best positioned to benefit from this regime’s political failure are not the Left, but the Right in various forms. Nonetheless, La Lotta Continua..
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