George Parker reviews 'Red Flag: The Uneasy Advance of Sir Keir Starmer'
September 2024: Prime minister Keir Starmer heads to Washington DC | Image by: Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street
4 min read
This updated account was never likely to be a hagiography – but there are intriguing insights into Starmer’s performance as PM
Michael Ashcroft’s biography of Sir Keir Starmer first came out as Red Knight in the summer of 2021, when the Labour leader was struggling in the polls, nobody knew what he stood for and he looked like he was out of depth.
We pick up again in the spring of 2025, with Ashcroft’s updated biography retitled Red Flag, with Starmer struggling in the polls, people trying to work out what he stands for – and with questions raised about his leadership.
In the meantime, of course, Starmer has achieved the small matter of a landslide general election victory, a result unimaginable when Ashcroft penned his first volume.
The Labour leader who – by many accounts – “isn’t any good at politics” appears to be doing something right. But Ashcroft’s book is a detailed account of Starmer’s many missteps and gives an insight into why many Labour MPs feel he should be doing better.
Starmer will not expect any favours from Ashcroft, a former Conservative deputy chairman, who says in his introduction that the Labour leader “did not want the book to be written” and that he “actively obstructed it”.
Instead Starmer entrusted the writing of his biography to Tom Baldwin, a former journalist who memorably crossed swords with Ashcroft in the past. It is fair to say that Red Flag is the more critical account of the Labour leader’s time at the party’s helm.
Ashcroft’s book is a detailed account of Starmer’s many missteps
The updated section of the book dwells heavily on Starmer’s disastrous first 100 days in Downing Street, notably on the “freebiegate” scandal, which the prime minister inexplicably allowed to drag on for weeks and what Ashcroft regards as policy missteps, including a big tax-raising budget.
Ashcroft also points an accusing finger at Starmer for spending a large part of his early premiership on planes, rather than keeping an eye on the domestic front, identifying the decision to remove the winter fuel payment from 10 million pensioners as a serious blunder.
“That was our original sin,” one senior Labour MP told me recently. Ashcroft portrays Starmer as failing to get a grip on his administration, suggesting that if he was not abroad he was often distracted by his obsession with watching Arsenal.
Intriguingly Ashcroft finds a source who says that some civil servants believed part of the problem was that Starmer and Sue Gray, his ill-fated chief of staff, were both in their 60s. “The physical pace of the job meant they both struggled,” the source says.
But is Starmer a quick learner? He was not very good initially, by all accounts, as director of public prosecutions, nor was he very good initially as Labour opposition leader or in his first months as prime minister. But on each occasion he has shown himself able to learn from his mistakes. He certainly has a stronger team around him now.
The final page of Ashcroft’s book is a reminder of how quickly things can change: it ends with Starmer being hammered on 2 April by Donald Trump’s tariff onslaught. Ashcroft suggests that Starmer’s flattery and his appointment of the EU-loving Peter Mandelson as his Washington envoy had failed to impress the President.
Shortly after the book’s publication, Trump struck his first trade deal with Britain, lavishing praise on Starmer, with a beaming Mandelson standing behind the President in the Oval Office, being complimented on his “beautiful accent”.
Where will Starmer be if – or when – Ashcroft next updates his book?
George Parker is Political editor of the Financial Times
Red Flag: The Uneasy Advance of Sir Keir Starmer
By: Michael Ashcroft
Publisher: Biteback
