As we witness Jeremy Corbyn struggling to create a culture of pluralism and democracy, it is instructive to compare this with the New Labour approach to party management in a book described by Luke Akehurst as “a brilliant read for anyone interested in history of Labour internal politics“. the author described it as a “rolling coup” which involved “an extensive covert internal organisation” and “a culture which facilitated manipulation  containing”. In this review of Lewis Minkin’s The Blair Supremacy, former left MP Alan Simpson relates how Blair preferred to lock left MPs including Jeremy Corbyn into “a sealed tomb” rather than purge them.

Lewis Minkin is nothing if not meticulous. Reading The Blair Supremacy is like sitting alongside skilled forensic scientists as they dissect the multi-layered elements that contributed to the death of the body in front of them. This isn’t quite where Blair left the Labour Party, but it’s not far short. For all its detail, Minkin still manages to make the book read like a thriller. What makes it captivating is Minkin’s grasp of the scrupulous planning that went into Blair’s managerialist coup that, for a time, took ownership of both the Labour Party and the country. Continue reading →