Hugh Kerr reviews The Starmer Symptom by Mark Perryman, Pluto Press, 2025

An interesting book overtaken by events: this was my prevailing thought after reading this book. Although dealing with Starmer, the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn, it doesn’t deal with the phenomenon that Your Party has become in a very short time. Knowing the time lapses of publishing this may be inevitable. It also fails to deal with the growing threat of fascism in Britain with the rise of Farage and Reform. Recent polling on Newsnight had Reform on 32% and Labour on 17%, just ahead of the Greens on 16%. Once you add Your Party to that polling mix the Labour Party and Starmer will be history, and the truth is Starmer is likely to be dumped by the Labour machine long before the next election. My bet is it will happen after Labour are defeated in the Scottish and Welsh elections and the local government elections next May. Since I mention Scotland and Wales let me point out that the book doesn’t address issues to do with Scotland, Wales or Ireland. It is a very Anglocentric book. Now I know that Perryman knows a lot about Scotland and indeed is in favour of Scottish independence, unlike Jeremy Corbyn, whose line has always been to let the Scottish people decide. Zarah Sultana reiterated this position in a recent speech in Glasgow. It’s my view that Your Party members in Scotland will support independence and make that part of their policy for Scotland. I don’t know what’s going to happen in Wales but clearly after the Caerphilly by-election Plaid will play a big role.

Despite these publishing deadline drawbacks this is a book well worth reading. There is short introduction from Clive Lewis MP which is highly critical of Starmer and ‘Starmerism’ and one wonders what Lewis and other left MPs will do if Your Party begins to be successful electorally.  It may be that their chances of re-election could improve as Your Party candidates compared with their chances with Labour, which could well be reduced to a rump of less than 100 MPs in four years’ time.

Perryman begins his introductory chapter with a quote from Gramsci: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear!” These ‘morbid symptoms’ clearly include the rise of Reform but, for Perryman, also the death of social democracy and its institutions like state owned enterprises. Perryman documents this well and sees hope in some of the community enterprises that have sprung up around the country, including the good work he has done with the food banks in Lewis and his very interesting Labour Day Schools, a couple of which I have attended. I note that Your Party in its local and regional meetings have tried to include these community initiatives in their meetings.

In a further eighteen chapters a variety of different authors, academics, activists, trade unionists and others attempt to explain Starmer’s Britain, or more accurately Starmer’s England. Some, like my old friend Hilary Wainwright, attempt to make the case for an independent left, but again she has been overtaken by events since publication with no mention of Your Party. Others document the rise of the Labour machine behind Starmer, in particular the role of Morgan McSweeney, the man who really runs Labour and apparently chose Starmer for the leadership. It was recently revealed that Labour Together, McSweeney’s organisation, received £700,000 of donations, much of which wasn’t declared to the Electoral Commission. Interestingly much of this money came from people like Trevor Chinn who is closely linked to Israel, and indeed this money was used along with money from the Israeli embassy to destroy Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour leader. I declare my interest here: I’ve known Jeremy for over 40 years. Indeed, he was a student at my old Polytechnic, North London. The charge that he was antisemitic was of course nonsense, but McSweeney et al used it to destroy him and to undermine Labour’s chance of victory in the 2017 election, a process well documented by the Forde Report (2022).

This raises a further question which Perryman’s book doesn’t spend enough time on: Starmer’s Zionist beliefs, which Starmer freely admits to holding. Yes, the book does mention the war in Gaza, and Starmer’s and Labour’s complicity in the genocide there. Again, events since the book went to press have reinforced the importance of this question, as well as the evidence of the Israeli funding of Starmer’s Labour and also of Tony Blair’s Institute. The banning of Palestine Action and the threatening of civil liberties by Starmer’s Labour is clearly part of a major trend not only in British politics but also in the US and parts of Europe.

Finally, there have been some recent revelations about Starmer’s political history, such as his rapid passage through a number of left groups without any great commitment to any of them or apparent interest in them by him or his friends. My old friend and comrade Ken Coates MEP, expelled from Labour along with me for opposing Blair’s New Labour, was convinced that Blair could have been recruited by British Intelligence while at University. I would not be surprised if that were the case. Nor would I be surprised if it came out in years to come that Keir Starmer was never a socialist, but a long term agent of British intelligence. Now that could be an interesting chapter of Perryman’s next book. In the meantime, this is an interesting account and well worth reading, but, like many books about contemporary politics, it has been overtaken by events.

Hugh Kerr

Hugh Kerr is a former Labour MEP, expelled by Labour, and subsequently a member of the Scottish Socialist Party, Solidarity, the SNP and Alba. He is now a member of Your Party.