Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire’s
Get In,
published in hardback last year, told the inside story of how Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney (not necessarily in that order) reformed the Labour Party and won the 2024 UK general election. The paperback edition, released last month, includes a new postscript,
The Passive Premiership, covering Starmer’s first year in office. (The postscript’s title is taken from a description of Starmer by an unnamed senior government official: “It’s a very oddly passive premiership.”)
Pogrund and Maguire’s post-election verdict is damning: “After fourteen years of estrangement, the Labour Party had reintroduced itself to the people in the worst possible terms. Starmer had promised a politics of service. His first act had been to stamp recklessly over their fragile trust in the state.” They argue that Starmer is disinterested in policy and disengaged from decision making, and they also criticise the presentational errors his government has made.
Starmer’s unwillingness to engage in policy decisions was most damaging when, shortly after the election, Labour announced a plan to means-test the winter fuel allowance for pensioners: “Starmer did not notice the stench of political death.” The plan was eventually reversed, as was a proposal to break a manifesto commitment not to raise income tax. These U-turns created a double whammy: public anger over the initial proposals, followed by press criticism over the policy reversals.
The book highlights the mixed messaging and negativity of Starmer’s speeches, such as when he replaced New Labour’s optimistic
Things Can Only Get Better anthem with a downbeat message: “‘Things will get worse,’ he said, ‘before they get better.’” Then there was the misjudged “island of strangers” speech which, in an
Observer interview with Tom Baldwin, Starmer later distanced himself from. And in the absence of a Starmer ideology, there were a series of confusing targets: “five missions that became ‘six measurable milestones,’ then ‘three foundations,’ before being abandoned entirely”.
Pogrund and Maguire cite Starmer’s relationship with Donald Trump as one of his few personal achievements: “Trump, despite himself, grew fond of the prime minister.” This had tangible benefits when the US President reduced tariffs on the UK:
“no other world leader had been given the preferential treatment Trump extended to Starmer.” (The relationship is now in doubt, after Trump mocked Starmer as “no Winston Churchill” earlier this month.)
The postscript was written before the latest scandal surrounding Peter Mandelson, whom Starmer appointed as his US ambassador and who is now under police investigation. But
Get In does include some fascinating background on the subject: “Not a single strategic decision was taken without the Irishman canvassing Mandelson’s view.” The authors make clear that McSweeney (the Irishman) was Mandelson’s protégée, and that Starmer made the ambassadorial appointment on McSweeney’s say so, without even speaking to Mandelson himself, “either before or after his appointment.”
Their conclusion refers back to a key quote from the book’s hardback edition, a metaphor for Starmer’s apparent position as McSweeney’s unwitting puppet: “back on the Docklands Light Railway — the passive prime minister, content to be driven to his destination by strangers who held him in contempt.” That could also be a description of
Boris Johnson’s working relationship with Dominic Cummings, and in both cases the relationships ultimately imploded.
