Patrick Maguire & Gabriel Pogrund ‘Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer’ (Bodley Head 2025: £25) Reviewed by Larry O’Hara (published in Labour Briefing April 2025)
INTRODUCTION
While not the first book to cover Starmer’s 2024 election victory (that was Anoushka Asthana’s ‘Taken As Red’ reviewed previously: which is also on this site) and there is some repetition of facts (and untruths) enough is here to make this book interesting in its own right: if deeply dishonest. It is not, I suggest, a book Starmer himself would much care for: though others in the piranha-infested swamp that is Labour High Command will. This dense (440 page) book starts with useful background on Morgan McSweeney, (p.12-35)–undoubtedly far more important in this tale than Starmer–attempting (poorly) to explain his political philosophy. Then there is description of how Starmer became Labour leader, members of his original clique duly name-checked, and how McSweeney came on board described. Next a trek through just how the Labour Left (and members generally) were disenfranchised, and Starmer’s actions in relation to the Tories, Partygate, Israel/Palestine and so on, then the 2024 election (on which Asthana has more) and finally the first 100 days of the new government.
AUTHORS PREVIOUS WITH McSWEENEY
These authors are higher up the media food chain than Asthana: whereas she was grateful to be allowed access to the higher echelons (up to a point) Maguire & Pogrund (hereafter M/P) see themselves as (and are) actual players in the Westminster game. As such, every bit as dishonest (and complicit) as the rest of them. Well-illustrated by their coverage of the Labour ‘antisemitism’ allegations. M/P claim that in 2018 on social media groups “in full view of the leadership of the Labour Party, the left spoke the conspiratorial hateful language of the far right. This was the army McSweeney would have to overcome” (p.37). They only name one person, Ian Love (Portsmouth Momentum). Not quite an army. But do reveal it was “McSweeney [who] ensured the most telling examples found their way to the Sunday Times” (p.37 1/4/18). They do not tell us Pogrund was lead author of this article, and that Love resigned Momentum membership two weeks afterwards. Nor do they inform us that antisemitic posts amounted to precisely 0.05% of the 4 million posts trawled. And of course the two other members mentioned in the original article had been suspended by Labour even before it was published. Given such dishonesty, it is no surprise (as in their previous book Left Out reviewed elsewhere) that at every turn M/P try to spin supposed actions against antisemitism as justified, often using quotes from the usual anonymous sources: thus the peremptory sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey is described as that of a “lunatic” who had committed “suicide by cop” (p.103), and they further claim she was “arguably the author of her own downfall” (p.110). Not so.
BOGUS ANTI-SEMITISM CHARGES REPEATED
Fully 39 pages are devoted to a highly partisan account of Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension first from the party and later withdrawal of the party whip (p.110-48). Calling to mind Alice in Wonderland: or rather Franz Kafka: thus, the mere fact Corbyn expressed the view antisemitism within Labour had been exaggerated for factional purposes meant such a “statement and interview easily passed the threshold for disciplinary action” (123). Reminds one of Trotsky: “one cannot be right against the party”. What M/P refer to as a “forlorn attempt to provide context” by Seamus Milne was anything but. This was the March 2019 Survation poll that the general public thought 34% of Labour members had been accused of antisemitism, when the real figure was 0.3%: i.e. exaggeration by a factor of 300! (p123). M/P do not challenge this highly relevant figure: hardly a shock given the Sunday Times (along with the BBC/Guardian) enthusiastically spread this untruth. There is a mealy-mouthed apologia for Starmer supporting the war crime of Israel starving Gaza of food electricity and water (p.327-31) and continual assertions that in McSweeney’s words Labour was a “racist antisemitic party”. Predictably (if shamefully) M/P describe the Jewish Labour Movement as having worked for “four years to expose Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party for what they believed it to be: antisemitic” (p.119). In fact, as Asa Winstanley has proven in his ‘Weaponising Anti-Semitism’ the JLM was a hollow shell given life by the Israeli Embassy to destroy Corbyn for his views on Palestine. A book they dare not mention, never mind refute, and to compound this they sneeringly quote Corbyn’s wife Laura stating attacks on Corbyn were about Palestine (p.112). Yet elsewhere admit rich investment broker Trevor Chinn was indeed motivated to fund McSweeney’s Labour Together organisation because of Palestine (p.29), such funding (illegally) kept secret to protect Chinn from public scrutiny (p.55), as indeed was his financing Starmer’s leadership campaign till voting had closed. Chinn’s influence was so great Tom Watson is supposed to have promised Chinn that if Labour had won a majority in 2019, he would have led a mass defection of MPs (p.107).
As befits the undisclosed but highly relevant fact Pogrund used to work for the Jewish Chronicle, it is no surprise M/P repeat the Suella Braverman lie concerning weekly pro-Palestinian marches in London that “peaceful attendees were overshadowed by protesters glorifying Hamas” (p.337). Nor indeed that they seek to minimise the vile racism of anti-Corbyn Labour staffers in the leaked Labour Submission to the Equality & Human Rights Commission, airily dismissing the evidence as a ‘morality play’ based on selective quotations buttressing a “baseless stab in the back myth” (p.81-2). Though they mention the report into the affair by Martin Forde KC, they somehow forget to disclose that Forde himself, after he expressed concerns Labour wasn’t taking his report seriously, was then threatened with a cease-and-desist letter by the party. Nice.
McSWEENEY & OTHER POND-LIFE
Turning to the two main protagonists, first McSweeney. He was primarily motivated by atavistic hatred, and patently still is: “in his mind, Corbyn’s politics were not just wrong they were evil” (p.27). M/P offer as explanation the fact that under Leftist Ted Knight child abuse had been rife in Lambeth: but concede the same could be said of Margaret Hodge’s Islington (p.19-20). So, no real explanation. At the core of McSweeney’s ideology, and practice, is utter contempt for Labour members: M/P state “McSweeney came to believe that the empowerment of party members was Labour’s original sin…the Irishman and his co-conspirators thought a party democracy that obliged elected representatives to put members before voters was the real elitism” (p.212). What he and the Starmer clique actually want is to ensure elected representatives defer to them, accountable to nobody but them. Ridiculously, M/P pretend McSweeney “was convinced The Voter was never wrong” (p.25). They do not mention the November 2023 opinion poll conducted for Left Foot Forward showing public ownership is favoured by the following %’s in buses 67%, water 73%, Railways 70%, Energy 65%, Postal Service 70% 78% schools and finally 81% want public sector involvement only in the NHS, a figure to confound not just McSweeney but Wes Streeting too.
Clearly, McSweeney has taken the authors fully into his confidence, and why not? Early on they let slip their belief that “since 2015 almost everyone in the Labour Party has tried to destroy Jeremy Corbyn” (p.13)—not the members of course, but certainly most MPs and the bureaucracy. And the real arena where the likes of McSweeney do politics is a small and entitled one revolving around Central London and Camden—as M/P say in a rare understatement “the dinner tables of private homes feature more frequently in these pages than the streets of individual constituencies” (p.10). Though one suspects even Lucrezia Borgia might baulk at inviting McSweeney to dinner and rightly be loath to turn her back on him. Given the aggressive control-freak that McSweeney is, he will no doubt exult at their recounting not just his successful conspiracy (admitted to be such: p.41) to install Starmer, but also bully members, threatening any Conference delegates not observing a minutes silence to mark the death of Elizabeth II (p.281) and the 7/10/23 Hamas incursion into Israel (p.324) with physical expulsion, and the shredding of their membership. Threats and high-handed behaviour extended to trade union leaders too: at the National Policy Forum in July 2023 McSweeney told them that if you create a bad [i.e. one he disagreed with] “policy you could use your votes to get it across the line but…we will take that document, we will throw it in a bin, and I will write the manifesto” (p.316). Concerning the failed leadership attempt to prevent Diane Abbott standing for election in 2024, M/P remark “statements deferring to the primacy of the NEC meant nothing: by then it was their politburo, the majority of members content to do as they were told” (p.396-7). His antics at the 2021 Conference, cackling manically and shouting ‘welcome to the Red Wedding’ at a Leftist delegate—clearly referring not to the original Scottish events but the Game of Thrones bloodbath—raise the distinct possibility McSweeney is a political psychopath, an appellation he would no doubt glorify in. We shouldn’t.
M/P usefully chronicle the development and membership of McSweeney’s secret ‘Project Ex’ WhatsApp group, which included ultra-Zionist witch-hunter Luke Akehurst, laughably described as a “moderate stalwart” (p.322) designed to facilitate altering the leadership election rules to prevent any future leader coming from the Left by bringing back an electoral college and raising the MP nomination threshold to 20% (p.216). Eventually achieved. The question arises, what were/are McSweeney’s political beliefs? Zionism certainly, anti-Leftism, and that he “wanted the Labour Party to be the establishment, to look and sound like good Royalists” (p.279), allied to contempt for MPs and party members generally. Threadbare, as too an initial aim of his Labour Together Trojan Horse within Labour to “develop a political vision that is relevant to voters concerns in a rapidly changing world and reflect their values” (p.33). However, this ‘vision thing’ never happened, and McSweeney never believed in Starmer’s 10 Pledges used to con Labour members into electing him in 2020 (p.93). As a Labour victory loomed, McSweeney “wondered what role he would play in a government run by Sue Gray [then Starmer’s Chief of Staff]. For once, the arch strategist lacked a strategy for himself” (p.378). Illuminating: McSweeney’s concern was not for any positive political project, just his own position. A marked contrast with (for example) the Tory Dominic Cummings who did/does have a political project.
Certainly less important than McSweeney in this saga we come to current PM, Keir Starmer. M/P do not interrogate his previous legal career at the Crown Prosecution Service, save for mentioning Karie Murphy’s dislike of him based on fast-tracked prosecutions for minor offences in the 2011 London riots (p.95)—something repeated in 2024. While Oliver Eagleton is mentioned as having picketed Starmer (p.347) no attempt to refute Eagleton’s forensic critique of Starmer’s time at the CPS (and his subsequent wrecking role as Shadow Brexit Secretary). There are cursory (and frankly unbelievable) mentions of Starmer’s dedication to duty and public service (p.275), as well as a desire for ‘efficiency’ (p.91) but these are fleeting asides.
Starmer does not come across well in this book, for good reason. M/P do admit the obvious: that Starmer is “a performer who relies almost exclusively on the printed word. Improvisation was beyond him” (p.402)—not a trait shared by his supposed exemplar Harold Wilson. But then, he really was clever. While many quotes are anonymous, the verdict of most around Starmer is hardly favourable. The overwhelming impression is he finds politics boring (p.221), dislikes it intensely (p.202), and politicians too (p.346). At the outset of his bid to become leader, incubated while publicly professing loyalty to Corbyn, M/P remark “he did not say why he wished to lead the Labour Party, or what he wished to do with power, but preoccupied himself with the tedious minutiae of the how...If Starmer knew what [his] politics were, then he kept them secret” (p.52). Equally damning, though not meant to be, is Tony Blair’s view that “I don’t think he really started anywhere, except vaguely progressive” (p.7). The image that sticks in the mind most however is one from a McSweeney acolyte (or perhaps the man himself as anonymous)—“occasionally they spoke of the leader as if he were a useful idiot. Said one, referring to the driverless Docklands Light Railway that wound its way through East London: ‘Keir’s not driving the train, he thinks he’s driving the train, but we’ve sat him at the front of the DLR’” (p.294).
PM STARMER: HARDLY IN CHARGE/SOON TO BE DUMPED?
Lest such an allegation (no politics) be thought exaggerated, consider the obvious fact that every single one of the ‘Ten Pledges’ Starmer made to win the leadership have been junked. M/P do not deny this but spin a revisionist account of how they were mistakenly adopted in the first place, citing McSweeney’s absence and a Starmer family bereavement (p.92-94). Pathetic. Equally pathetic are incredible attempts by M/P to pretend Starmer’s victimisation and purges of Leftists were not factional (p.69-71) and indeed that he wanted unity with the Left who spurned him and rejects any factional taxonomy (p.304). The German SPD’s Olaf Scholz, with his own four ‘missions’ was an inspiration for Starmer (p.307). In view of what has happened in Germany, the SPD recently slung out of office alongside a record vote for the Far Right AFD, not so much an inspiration the fate of his fellow dullard is certainly a portent. Negative vibes even in the Shadow Cabinet concerning Starmer are starkly portrayed: apparently a small group went to Blairite grandee Alan Milburn “and asked how were they supposed to work under a leader who seemed to possess everything a prime minister would need—except a vision” (p.302). Without a vision, politics is of course literally pointless, zigzagging all over the place, buffeted by, but not reacting strategically to, events. Sound familiar? Even Starmer eventually realised he needed to at least simulate vision, and to provide one called back to politics Blairite Peter Hyman, who articulated five ‘Missions’—the highest sustained growth in the G7, Britain becoming a clean energy super-power, reforming the NHS, making the streets safe and cutting down barriers to opportunity (p.307-11). Safe to say, not delivered unless you believe economic stasis, abandoning a Green New Deal, accelerating NHS privatisation and maintaining the two-child benefit cap count as delivery….More instances of Starmer’s procrastination and impulsive indecisiveness are in the book, but you get the idea. This is no panegyric: as M/P say early on “even the people who have worked at his right hand in opposition and government question whether he can truly be described as a leader” (p.8). With that, at least, I concur.
SUE GRAY KNIFED IN THE BACK?
The last section of this book is extraordinary but revealing: ‘Epilogue 100 Days’. Readers would be entitled to expect some account, albeit broad brush, of the new governments first 100 days, as it says on the tin. Instead, it is almost entirely devoted to a largely unanswered ad feminam attack on Starmer’s now departed Downing Street Chief of Staff Sue Gray, replaced of course, by McSweeney himself. She is blamed for everything: blocking appointments, denying access to Starmer, sidelining ministers, not having a delivery strategy, even free-geargate—the list is endless. It is neither my place nor inclination to defend anyone who has been close to Starmer but at first sight this chapter is absurd, on closer inspection not so. From the start of McSweeney’s malign interventions in national Labour politics Pogrund has helped him out (the dishonest Sunday Times article 1/4/18 was the first instance) and this chapter looks like more of the same. I strongly suspect even ostensibly negative stories about McSweeney that have appeared in the Sunday Times: including the Labour Together funding illegality (long after the fact) came from his circle, puffing up the image of this self-regarding low grade political thug. Then there are the briefings against Gray, and her ally Lord Waheed Alli lavishly bestowing gifts on ‘free gear Keir’: M/P deny it was McSweeney or another Blairite retread Matthew Doyle (p.415). I do not believe them: would you? After all, McSweeney’s politics are barely more substantial than Starmer’s, but whereas Starmer is excoriated for his, McSweeney is given a free pass. And no, I do not believe relentlessly chanting ‘Change Labour/Change Britain’ is a vision, any more than the idiotic one-word blurb adorning Labour’s manifesto ‘Change’ qualifies either.
STREETING & RAYNER: JUST AS VILE?
Wes Streeting is given a very easy ride in this book: merely gently chided for being ambitious (he is for the Labour Right Starmer’s successor-designate, and unlike him actually articulate). Yet the potential corruption implied by his private office being funded by private healthcare interests is actually even more reprehensible than Starmer’s freebies. There are also strange continued references to how friendly Deputy PM Angela Rayner is with Trevor Chinn, Lord Michael Levy and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis (p.353), and her promise to Chinn she was (is?) willing to expel 100,000 Labour members over antisemitism. For was not Rayner in 2019 photographed in Palestinian Dalloula Neder’s Manchester shop wearing a Keffiyah and claiming to support Palestine? The same Rayner who sat impassively while Neder was dragged out of a Labour meeting 25/1/24 by police for daring to brandish photographs of family members in Gaza murdered by the IDF. That M/P recount Rayner considered a coup against Starmer when his political fortunes were at a low ebb (p.176-83) does her image no harm in terms of where this book is coming from, M/P evidently appreciate her turncoat politics and want to cultivate her as a possible future leader, like Streeting. M/P’s coverage of McSweeney Streeting and Rayner all have in common the fact these sources are ones in/near to power they want to maintain/cultivate (like everybody else they are still unsure about Rachel Reeves from Customer Services) whereas Gray, Alli and it seems Starmer himself they believe are already gone or on the way out. In Starmer’s case, unfortunately he might drag the country down with him, given his political economic and moral ineptitude. A rerun of the Falklands War stunt that helped Thatcher in the Ukraine is neither desirable nor feasible.
CONCLUSION
As long as you bear the author’s various agendas in mind, and have a strong stomach, an interesting book, especially if the Labour Left can reverse engineer some (not all!) of McSweeney’s techniques to take the party back as the Starmer/McSweeney project self-destructs due to external events and internal contradictions. Just don’t expect any political insights into anything outside the Westminster bubble: after all, these reporters in their previous 400-page book ‘Left Out’ (a hatchet job on Corbyn’s Labour) showed themselves incapable of even defining what the Corbyn project was! The last words should go to Sue Gray, who these reptiles (along with others) so enjoyed baiting: “scumbag journalists” (p.427).
About The Author
