Oliver Eagleton, the author of The Starmer Project, is the son of writer Terry Eagleton.[6] He is an editor for socialist journal New Left Review,[7] and writes articles for alternative media organisation Novara Media, which has a left-wing outlook. He began writing The Starmer Project after posting a blog post about Starmer's tenure as Director of Public Prosecutions in January 2021, announcing the book in August with an expected release date of May 2022. Although Eagleton has a negative view of Starmer, he said: "It is important to be constructive and clear-eyed. I hope that the tone of the book isn't just polemical." The Starmer Project is Eagleton's first book and was published by Verso Books.[8]
Synopsis
This book is a short biography of Starmer divided into four chapters. Chapter one, "The Lawyer", is about his legal career. Chapter two, "The Politician", is about his first five years as a member of parliament. Chapter three, "The Candidate", is about the 2020 Labour leadership election. Chapter four, "The Leader", is about the aftermath of the leadership election.
The Starmer Project is critical and hostile towards Starmer and portrays him as a ruthless person who sabotaged Corbyn's leadership to succeed him as Labour's leader. During the Brexit process, Eagleton argues, Starmer led a small group of anti-Brexit MPs, including other shadow ministers, who manipulated Corbyn into changing the party's Brexit policy from 2018 onward (previously, the party had pledged to accept the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum). Labour failed to maintain its coalition of voters at the 2019 national election, in which party policy was to campaign for a second Brexit referendum. He campaigned for the leadership in 2020 on a promise to continue Corbyn's policies if elected leader but purged the left from the party leadership upon gaining power;[7] for example, he removed his leadership rival Rebecca Long-Bailey from his shadow cabinet. His libertarianism slowly turns into paternalism, and he pledges to give Britain's voters security.[9] Starmer focuses on non-partisan issues, such as incompetence, and is described as an authoritarian centrist who wants technocratic reform. He is also alleged to have been contradictory throughout his career.[10]
The book criticises Labour's 1997, 2001, and 2005 general election victories during the centrist New Labour period, under the leadership of Tony Blair, but praises its defeat in the 2017 general election under Corbyn. According to Eagleton, New Labour "lost millions of votes after its landslide victory" in the 1997 general election, while the loss in 2017 had "the biggest swing to Labour since 1945".[1]
Reception
In the New Statesman, Richard Seymour calls the book "[t]he most detailed study of the Labour leader" and "the best account of his leadership so far".[10]The Independent's Andrew Grice described the book as a "cogent left-wing critique" of Starmer's Labour leadership. He adds that while Eagleton appears too pessimistic around Starmer's climate action and opposition to rentier capitalism, he is correct to call for more action against the ruling Conservative Party.[11] In The Times, Patrick Maguire calls the book an "aggressive, critical account of [Starmer's] time in public life" and "the meatiest biography of the leader of the opposition to date". Maguire believes "Eagleton's depiction of the politics of Starmer's parliamentary career [to be] wide of the mark" and argues that Starmer's political trajectory is better explained as a progression from being an outsider to an insider in government than from left to right.[12] Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Tom Harris gave the book two out of five stars, criticising its defence of Corbyn's political positions and accusing it of left-wing bias. Harris said that some of the book's content was valid, but Eagleton's bias had made it "difficult to take the rest of his political agenda seriously".[1]
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