A new book has outlined how the plot to rid Labour of Cobynism was initiated by Westminster insiders in the wake of the 2017 general election when the now-independent MP came within a few thousand votes of defeating the Conservatives.
Taken as Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party, details how Labour Together set about ridding the party of ‘hard left’ ideals and replacing them with electable, centre-right policies.
Morgan McSweeney, who now works as the head of political strategy under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, received backing from two wealthy donors, businessman Trevor Chinn and hedge fund owner Martin Taylor, to defeat Jeremy Corbyn.
Anushka Asthana suggests that McSweeney’s biggest fear was that Labour might actually win an election because that would prevent the renewal they were focused on.
The strategist also displayed an unhealthy obsession with alt-left websites such as the Canary, which had been propelled into the limelight on the back of Facebook groups.
McSweeney had an aim, Asthana noted, which was to schmooze the Guardian and kill the Canary.
“Destroy the Canary or the Canary destroys us,” he told the Labour Together MPs.
Exclusive extracts from the book also suggest Corbyn’s appearance at Glastonbury was a key moment which stuck in the craw of McSweeney.
He later told a friend that he saw this as Corbyn’s “Icarus moment”, in which he imagined the Labour leader standing backstage at Glastonbury with a choice: take that election result and turn to the country to cement the deal; or walk into the warm embrace of festivalgoers, who were unrepresentative of the wider electorate.
To him, Corbyn had just flown too close to the sun.
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