Because Rodney Starmer, the Labour leader’s father, was not employed as a toolmaker, but self-employed; and because the parents bought a house and once posed for a photograph with the Duke of Kent, “perhaps it would be most accurate to say that [his background] was neither ‘working class’ … nor ‘posh’ but … petit bourgeois”. Morgan McSweeney, the guiding light behind Labour Together, is today one of the most powerful people in the Party, a key figure in selecting future parliamentary candidates.

The broader political initiative, a billionaire policing the boundaries of working-class authenticity so intensely that nobody without rickets can ever be Labour leader again, is so absurd it’s almost endearing; but it doesn’t provide a very three-dimensional portrait of the man. In fact two years down the line the Party is more divided than ever, a Stalinist purge has been carried out on socialists, while black and Asian voters have been turned off by the apparent racism of Starmer and his manoeuvring of Labour. Oliver Eagleton says it was a deliberate ploy by Starmer, arguing that either way he would come out on top. He asserted that the ‘independent’ Rose report had refuted accusations of a systemic problem with spycops, when in fact it was a patent whitewash. His period as DPP is something he is very proud of but some of the decisions he made and the prosecutions he went ahead with (not to mention those he didn’t) raise some difficult questions that have yet to be answered.

The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused. didn't think i'd be interested in reading anything about the l*bour p*rty in 2022 but eagleton's biography of preeminent wrecker keir starmer is a welcome corrective to the 'empty suit' image of starmer and a solid post-mortem of the corbyn years that correctly locates corbyn's failure in his capitulation to the people's vote campaign.

Whilst Starmer and his Progress chums thought they were playing a blinder, the electorate saw them, and alas the Labour Party, as effectively not knowing whether to shit or get off the pot as far as Brexit was concerned. The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Perhaps more importantly, it seems to switch focus from Starmer to Corbyn for too long in a book about Starmer - it's more of an obsession with vanquishing Corbyn's replacement.Hailed as a human-rights champion and political outsider, what sort of politician is he really, and what mark is he making on the new politics of Labour? It is quite clear from the outset that Mr Eagleton is not a fan of Starmer, but this should not deter readers as The Starmer Project is to my mind mostly fair and balanced. The final chapter is Afterword and I found this an interesting area where Mr Eagleton supposed how Corbyn and a group of supporters broke away to create a new left-wing party, and how that might have played out in the political landscape.