Towards the end of Jeremy Corbyn’s time as Labour leader, the former head of the civil service, Bob Kerslake, was tasked with auditing his office, troubleshooting what had become a malfunctioning and divided operation. Signing off his recommendations in the autumn of 2019, Kerslake wrote: “If you can find a political way of not having a general election for a little while, you should do so. Because you really are not ready.” By this late point in Left Out: the Inside Story of Labourunder Corbyn, the truth of his observation is grimly apparent, but the force of those words still hits like a punch to the stomach.
Authored by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire, political correspondents for the Sunday Times and the Times respectively, Left Out is a detailed account of the second half of the unlikely story of Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, covering the period between 2017 and 2019, when the operation went “from Glastonbury to catastrophe,” as they put it. We know how this story ends, and for many of us on the left it makes painful reading—no less so nine months into the re-election of a populist right-wing government that has so badly mishandled a deadly pandemic. At times the book has you reading through your fingers, dismally aware of the consequences of the mounting, unforced errors from a Labour leadership trying to realise “the project” of a socialist government, as well as damaging attempts to undermine it from within by hostile Labour MPs and parts of the party machine. It is a book to be read dolefully and in one sitting.
There is something for everyone. Those who always viewed Corbyn as calamitously incompetent will find confirmation in the portrayal of an indecisive, conflict-averse and absent character. The leader of the opposition’s office (Loto) is revealed as shambolic at the critical moments. For others, there is corroboration of claims made in a leaked party document earlier this year: that officials at the Southside headquarters, mostly Labour right factionalists, were running a “parallel campaign, out of sight and knowledge of Team Corbyn”—funnelling funds into the seats of MPs hostile to the leadership. Then there are almost parodic depictions of rebel MPs secretly plotting to set up the Independent Group, who would leave the party in 2019, start to splinter before rebranding as Change UK, and then splinter again before partially merging with the Lib Dems prior to the election—when they would all lose their seats. There’s bleak comedy, too, in the idea of Corbyn and his wife, Laura Álvarez, refusing to relocate to No 10 should Labour win power, with his aides suggesting sweeteners—an allotment in Downing Street’s rose garden, or accommodating refugees in the couple’s Islington home—to persuade them. Shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith, who was committed to multi- rather than unilateral disarmament, was nicknamed “Nukin’ Nia” by Loto.
Fed by interviews with insiders in the immediate aftermath of a heavy defeat in the 2019 election, the book needs to be read somewhat sceptically, with an awareness of many players’ motives—to pour scorn on the Corbyn project, or to exculpate themselves from its mistakes. Nobody comes out of this well, yet one storyline eventually dominates: the way the civil war in the Labour Party ultimately reached into the very heart of the project, in Loto. This narrative not only feeds the worst assumptions about the radical left as a self-destructively squabbling mob, it also fuels the tendencies of those who see treacherous plots as the only cause of Corbyn’s failure.
Running through the book are accounts of a party undermining itself with endemic factionalism. Left Out depicts some Labour MPs reacting with dismay to Corbyn’s leadership, while the atmosphere at Southside was “toxic, distrustful and openly mutinous.” This inevitably fuelled suspicion within Loto, but it just as inevitably clouded decision-making. That much is miserably apparent in a chapter on allegations of sexual harassment by Labour MPs and officials, carrying the suggestion that measures were in some cases not properly pursued by Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s chief of staff, who had, it is alleged, prioritised protecting Corbyn loyalists. The book notes Loto’s view that such cases “could be more easily dealt with by being nipped in the bud by the likes of Murphy” and a reluctance to surrender to the formal disciplinary processes run by Southside, which might take the opportunity to “make their lives more difficult.” (Murphy denies this.)
Such grisly factionalism is also in the subtext of the party’s failings over antisemitism, a problem that, although difficult, was not insurmountable, and yet was compounded by avoidable mistakes and dreadful errors of judgment. The book lists some of the lowlights of a saga that evolved from acute crisis to morally and politically wounding chronic condition. These include Corbyn initially offering support in 2012 to an artist, Mear One, whose mural featuring antisemitic tropes was unearthed in March 2018. That summer, the leadership was also mired in an epic row over its refusal to adopt all the examples appended to a definition of antisemitism produced by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. (The party was eventually dragged into accepting them all.) What the book doesn’t mention is that by the time of the Mear One mural incident, a strand of Corbyn supporters were either actively deploying antisemitism or vociferously denying it as part of their defence of the Labour leader. In other words, the toxic way this row played out only made the issue worse.
[su_pullquote]“Between 2017 and 2019 the operation went from Glastonbury to catastrophe”[/su_pullquote]According to Andrew Murray, one of Corbyn’s key advisers, the Labour leader struggled to empathise with British Jews over antisemitism because, like many on the left, his concept of racism was of a prejudice that punches down, hitting the disadvantaged, poor and marginalised (whereas the antisemitic conspiracy of a shadowy, all-powerful group supposedly punches up). Murray’s statement is, in itself, troublesome, suggesting that British Jewry is homogenously prosperous. It also belies a misunderstanding of how bigotry works: it is a hateful response to racial groups, yes, but it is prejudice that constructs those racialised minorities in the first place. His comments confirm suspicions that blindspots around antisemitism permeated the top of the party, rendering the leadership incapable of effectively dealing with the problem, causing it to spiral.
At one point Left Out lists proposals suggested to heal the wounds with Britain’s Jewish community, made by Murphy, after consultation with the Labour peer Michael Levy. These included Corbyn making a trip to Auschwitz, visiting the Jewish Free School in north London and meeting with residents of a Jewish care home. Any of these, the authors note, might have been decent reconciliation measures. None was pursued. Corbyn is described as incapable of getting past the personal hurt that he felt on being accused of racism at worst and of tolerating antisemitism at best.
But the rush to condemn Corbyn as personally antisemitic on the one side and—on the other—to insist on his anti-racist credentials were both distractions. Focusing on the personal took the analysis far away from a proper understanding of racial prejudice as a deep-seated, ever-present, animating force in society—which in turn curtailed the capacity to understand what it means, or how it had shown up within the Labour Party.
In the aftermath of the 2017 election, when Labour secured a historically high share of the vote on a left-wing platform, the leadership might have reached out to other sections of the party to consolidate support. But Left Out reveals it was not until 2019 that senior aides even considered (although did not act on) the idea of bringing higher-profile talent from the backbenches into the shadow cabinet: David Lammy, Ed Miliband and Anneliese Dodds were mentioned, “soft left” politicians who now sit in Keir Starmer’s top team. Similarly, in April 2018 Corbyn aides met to discuss potential staff changes at Southside and one asked whether it might be “safer to employ someone with the relevant experience but who isn’t necessarily completely aligned politically?” But the project ended up concentrating power in the hands of its own people, not a unique path for a Labour leader, but nonetheless a missed opportunity—not least because a degree of political diversity breeds strength and a capacity to stress-test strategic decisions.
By the time we get to the Brexit endgame, the book outlines a battle to control the Labour Party so pervasive that it seemed like everyone was fighting their own battles, including Corbyn’s longstanding allies—in particular John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor. A good, old-fashioned betrayal narrative certainly lends drama, but while earlier chapters make efforts at even-handedness, here it seems to be abandoned for what reads more like briefings against Team McDonnell. The shadow chancellor is cast as pursuing a separate project. (Murphy, who often enjoys the last word, is quoted as saying of McDonnell: “he moved against both of us… this should never have happened. Ultimately it fucked our project.”) There are suggestions of wounded pride and rivalry stalking the shadow chancellor and his former staffer, Andrew Fisher, who was by then Labour’s head of policy. Attempts to move the party to what is cast as a project-wrecking second EU referendum position come across here as essentially the design of anti-Corbyn plotters—and some eyebrow-raising claims are made to support this. We are told that disgruntled ex-Labour Southside officials who went on to work for the People’s Vote campaign seeded the multiple local party motions for a referendum during 2018’s annual conference. But this not only underplays the significant mobilisation efforts of the Corbyn-friendly group Another Europe is Possible (slogan: “Love Corbyn, hate Brexit”), it also ignores that some local parties drafted motions under their own steam. Developing the idea of Team McDonnell splintering from the project, the book explains that Fisher kept the unions in the dark over the contents of the 2019 manifesto, for fear they would be passed to Corbyn’s most trusted aide Seumas Milne (who had a tight grip on the big policy decisions, but not necessarily the nuts and bolts of the manifesto). But one trade union official involved told me this was not the case: there were months of policy engagement, which accelerated once the election was called.
While it’s undeniably a skill to turn party wrangles into a dramatic page-turner, the breathless prose is at times wearyingly typical of the personality-obsessed tittle-tattle for which lobby journalism is known. (We read how Murphy “bore the project on her shoulders like Atlas, sustaining the effort through sheer force of will.”) There are frequent references to “the project” but little explanation of what it aimed to achieve, the economic and social forces animating it, or why Loto fought so hard (if ineffectively) for it. Yet the book does contain thoughtful observations that prompt wider questions about power and leadership, friendship and loyalty, solidarity and the capacity to engage people beyond your own camp.
Corbyn, by this book’s account, was compromised by personality traits unsuited to leadership that he was unable to surmount. He is portrayed as being incapable of making the necessary decisions or accommodations; and as being beaten down well before the December election defeat. But how does leadership stay true to its principles, without being so inflexible as to torpedo its own path to power? And how might loyalty be constructively defined, so that disagreements between longstanding allies aren’t construed as irreconcilable betrayals? A toxic organisational culture is not unique to the Labour left. The outsized egos, naked ambition and power-play that are features of politics across the spectrum—and often show up in media organisations, too—aren’t conducive to harmonious hives of efficiency. But the bunker mentality that gripped the Corbyn project, even if at times an understandable reaction to the neverending onslaught of attacks, was a fatal flaw. This political tradition is unlikely to be a majority force inside the parliamentary Labour Party anytime soon. To achieve any influence on behalf of its transformative policies, needed now more than ever, it is going to have to figure out how to work with progressives outside its own tribe. What a pity that it couldn’t do so when it was in a stronger position to persuade others to listen.
Left Out: the Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire (Vintage, £18.99)
