BOOK REVIEW

“The Fraud: Keir Starmer, Morgan McSweeney and the Crisis of British Democracy” (Paul Holden)

David Jackson

This is a lengthy, significant and substantial book of almost 550 pages. It is supported by nearly 800 footnotes, which the author decided to place online.  To do it proper justice, requires more than one review. This review is an overview of the book, followed by a consideration of the early years of Labour Together and Morgan McSweeney. 

Its significance lies not in it being a biography of Keir Starmer and his rise to power – there are four other books^[1] which the author refers to in the preface as commendable in their own way, putting considerable evidence into the public domain, drawing on each of them to some extent. 

Mr Holden claims that what makes this book different is that it is substantially based on leaked documentation from within the Labour Party, unavailable to the other authors. He is also clear that he has many areas of disagreement with the authors of three of those books – the exception being Oliver Eagleton – but has eschewed an ongoing back-and-forth in the interests of avoiding tediousness.

It is a serious piece of work drawing attention to the work and contribution of Labour Together headed by Morgan McSweeney and its role in helping to bring Keir Starmer to power. Holden asserts that McSweeney’s clique often employed dirty tricks to undermine the left-wing leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, helped Starmer become his successor on false pretences, then purged their opponents – all made possible by donations that McSweeney unlawfully failed to disclose. 

Holden tells this story in 7 parts.  The first part is centred on Labour Together and the secretive nature of its activities.  The next part tells the story of Starmer’s April 2020 election as leader of the Labour Party.  Parts 3 to 5 covers the period up to the end of 2021 and outlines how the Starmer leadership took control of the Party far more effectively and more comprehensively than the Left had done during Corbyn’s leadership. Parts 6 and 7 looks at the 2022 to 2024 period.   It centres on how the public policy offer during those years lurched to the Right, compared not just to the 2019 General Election, but also to Starmer’s own platform in the 2020 leadership contest.

It is also a book that has been published at the optimum time in terms of its potential to make an impact. There is no discussion of the current Labour Government apart from the last half of the last chapter which it headlines as 118 days of disappointment – an epilogue in all but name. Any books published in future years are likely to focus on the record of a Starmer administration, in which the activities of McSweeney (if mentioned at all) would be dealt with in a prologue. 

It could have been written a year earlier, but it would be a substantially different work, not least because it would have missed out on the activities of the Labour party bureaucracy prior to the 2024 General Election and a substantive realisation of the Starmer project.  

There are three aspects of the book about which I am sceptical and are interrelated, although it doesn’t diminish the book’s overall value and usefulness. The first is the characterisation of McSweeney which I think overplays his role and responsibility.  In political writing for a wider audience, there is always a receptive market for the portrayal of an obscure, unelected bureaucrat exercising a malevolent influence. Is political analysis being finessed to comply with a literary trope? 

Second, it underplays the role and impact of politicians, whether it was Steve Reed and others who were part of Labour Together or Keir Starmer, who cannot be dismissed as empty suits lacking agency or a world view of their own. There was enough in their political and public service pasts to show that they had their own fully formed world view. If they choose to misrepresent or downplay it in a way, it is the duty of their opponents to ask questions, challenge and argue.

The third aspect is an impression fostered to view Corbyn, his supporters and the wider Left in the Labour Party as innocent victims of their failure and ultimate fall from power in 2019-2020. Without it being stated explicitly, the emphasis on the repeated mendacity and wickedness of McSweeney and Starmer can easily lead the reader into not asking fair questions of the Left over the defeat of Corbyn and Corbynism within the Labour Party or excusing failure due to the strength and skills of the forces they had to contend with between 2015 and 2019. 

In the financial world, whenever fraud is committed in an organisation, it doesn’t occur in a vacuum – there are always warning signs and failures to exercise controls, checks and due diligence. Financial fraudsters often bring with them a considerable amount of charm, politeness, seriousness and even ostensible willingness to help and support. And these traits can be replicated in the political arena. 

But even the most skilled fraudsters leave a trail of breadcrumbs that are often either dismissed or not acted on.  

Yes, Labour Together were funded by donations most of which in value terms were not properly declared as expected (and this will be covered in a separate review).  

Yes, there was also a degree of skill with which they operated in the shadows – there were also two long periods of relative inactivity. The first was between November 2016 and February 2019 when nothing was posted on Labour Together’s Facebook or Twitter accounts; the second was a period of relative quiet between mid-2020 and early 2023.

But there’s also evidence of events which was not properly addressed that was ultimately to the detriment of the Corbyn Project. This becomes clear when you consider the people who were the driving forces in Labour Together and their actions at critical periods in 2015 and 2016.

Labour Together were first formed in 2015 as a corporate entity, Common Good Labour, which was registered with Companies House on 9 June 2015. Its sole director was John Clarke who would later turn up as a director of Blue Labour.

Holden notes that the date of Common Good Labour’s registration was only 6 days after Jeremy Corbyn first announced his intention to run for the leadership of the Labour Party. This is probably best regarded as a coincidence – it was widely believed that Corbyn would not meet the threshold of nominations from Parliamentarians to contest the Labour Leadership. 

Holden with the benefit of his Labour Party sources, tells us that many of the people who were behind the formation of Common Good Labour had collaborated closely for many years. They included Jonathan Rutherford (a political adviser), Jon Cruddas, Steve Reed and Morgan McSweeney. 

According to the same emails, the key movers behind the creation of Common Good Labour were the Labour donor Sir Trevor Chinn (whose role will be covered in more detail in a future review) and Jon Cruddas. Chinn initially wanted the organisation to be headed by the Blairite MP for Streatham, Chuka Umunna, then seen as a rising star in the Party (who ultimately ended his political career in 2019 by leaving Labour for Change UK). Umunna rejected the overtures and the next names that were mooted were Tristram Hunt (the Labour MP for Stoke Central between 2010 and 2017) and Steve Reed. 

Common Good Labour changed its name to Labour Together and announced its existence in October 2015 through The Observer where Cruddas announced that Labour Together ‘aimed to bring together all sections of our party to discuss and debate the future of our party’. He also announced that his colleagues included Steve Reed, Lisa Nandy and Baroness Judith Blake. 

There was a further development with Labour Together in March 2016 when John Clarke resigned as Director and was replaced by Chinn, Reed, Nandy and Cruddas. They would remain as Directors until 2023.

According to Holden, Corbyn’s team in LOTO (Leader of the Opposition Office) were concerned at an early stage about Labour Together but were mollified when Nandy explained that the group was not ‘anti-Jeremy’, to which Holden makes this conclusion;

“Perhaps this was true at the time; McSweeney had not yet joined Labour Together or united forces with Reed. Nevertheless, the assurance that Labour Together was not ‘anti-Jeremy’ stands out in retrospect as a moment of poignant historical irony”.

Holden does not elaborate on those concerns within LOTO, but they were perfectly reasonable in relation to Steve Reed. Reed’s political past had included being Leader of Lambeth Council in South London between 2006 and 2012 where he had been very active in factional conflict against the Left.  He was also the vice-chairman of the Progress group which is clearly Blairite in its political orientation. In 2015, he supported Liz Kendall in the leadership election. Earlier in 2015, when asked on Twitter to consider nominating Jeremy Corbyn for Leader to get his name on the ballot paper, Reed responded:

“A wide ranging debate is a good idea, but showing the voters we are even more detached from reality than they suspected isn’t”.

However, in this passage of the book, Holden states that Reed would:

“serve on Corbyn’s front bench as shadow minister under various portfolios between September 2015 and April 2020”. 

It implies that he was a loyal shadow minister.  This omits the fact that he resigned as a shadow minister in June 2016 as part of a mass resignation of Labour frontbenchers in what was subsequently described as the “chicken coup” against Corbyn, though he apparently returned to the front bench in October 2016 becoming a shadow spokesperson for civil society.

As for Lisa Nandy, she resigned from the Shadow Cabinet in June 2016 and then in the subsequent Leadership contest between Corbyn and Owen Smith served as co-chair of Smith’s campaign team. 

Holden effectively overlooks the fact that 2 of the 3 Labour MPs heading up an organisation supposedly devoted to party unity were very clearly ‘anti-Jeremy’ during 2015-2016 and were prominent actors during a period when over 80 per cent of Labour MPs passed a motion of no confidence in Corbyn. And Holden doesn’t make the conclusion that the initial concerns of people in LOTO about Labour Together proved to be justified within a year. In fact, the  “chicken coup” would have been sufficient grounds for a Corbyn-led Left to try and make MPs more accountable through mandatory reselection, but they chose not to do so.

All this was before Morgan McSweeney joined Labour Together in 2017. McSweeney did not impose his values on Labour Together. He was already aligned with and comfortable about the predominant values as practiced by Labour Together.

Holden devotes a significant part of Chapter 1 to McSweeney’s backstory. In 2015, McSweeney’s associations with the Labour Party went back over two decades having worked for the party in the mid-1990s. He subsequently moved onto the Party’s media operations in time for the 2001 General Election when he was given the task of feeding data into the famed Excalibur computer that stored information to be used by the Labour Party’s rebuttal unit.

He came to wider prominence when he worked alongside Steve Reed when Reed was leader of Lambeth Council. According to a New Statesman profile of him, McSweeney “led a revolt against the far-left factions for which the authority had become notorious”. Subsequently he went on to work for the Labour Party in Dagenham and for the Local Government Association (LGA) until he joined Labour Together in 2017. 

His time at LGA was interrupted in 2015 when he ran Liz Kendall’s campaign for Labour Leader. Running as a Blairite, she secured 4.5 per cent of the vote.  Holden also describes McSweeney as a long-time protégé of Peter Mandelson, though it is unclear whether this was obvious or widely known in the world of London Labour Party politics in 2015.  Nevertheless, given how the Labour Left generally regarded Blairism and Progress, they should have made the working assumption that anyone who ran the leadership campaign of a Blairite would be fully signed up to this project.

Holden attempts to demonstrate how McSweeney managed to hide in plain sight, “convincing the very people whose politics he was actually conspiring against that he was a reasonable man who had their best interests at heart”.

He cites the case of Gráinne Maguire, an Irish comedian and political commentator who was the co-host of a podcast “Changing Politics” which ran for 20 episodes in 2018.  McSweeney was highly instrumental in suggesting and scripting the podcast which was also generously funded by Labour Together. 

Holden paints in very bright colours when he describes the working relationship between Maguire and McSweeney – Maguire had voted twice for Corbyn and openly identified with the party’s left – Maguire was clearly taken with McSweeney, their shared Irishness underpinning an instant rapport – After a long time in the party, Maguire had become finely attuned to ‘Progress types’ – She detected no hint that McSweeney was aligned with this faction. 

Holden is trying to depict the skill and subterfuge with which McSweeney operated, whereas I am left pondering how someone who “openly identified with the party’s left,” had voted twice for Corbyn, had been a long time in the party and was “finely attuned to Progress types” managed to overlook or disregard what McSweeney did in the 2015 leadership election.

Perhaps, part of the answer lies in the cliché of ‘tone is set at the top’. The Corbyn leadership didn’t just preach unity within the Labour Party, they also strove to practice it. Interestingly, Holden has found one clip of McSweeney speaking to camera in July 2019 at a meeting hosted by Labour Together on ‘How we can build a 21st Century Labour Party?”.

Also present on the platform is the Director of Progress, the Director of Momentum (Laura Parker) and Neal Lawson – a friend of Jon Cruddas – who as Director of Compass was heading a group that sought to reconcile different factions and traditions within Labour as exemplified by Progress and Momentum. Holden notes that both Parker and Lawson would later fall foul of McSweeney’s political project and denounce it, but in July 2019, McSweeney was utterly convincing and played both of them like a fiddle.

The next part of the Review will consider the funding of Labour Together and how it was kept out of the public domain for so long and its significance.

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^[1] “The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right (2022)” Oliver Eagleton; “Keir Starmer: The Biography (2024)” Tom Baldwin; “Taken as Red: The Truth About Starmer’s Labour (2025)” Anushka Asthana; “Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer (2025)” Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire.