'A vividly written page-turner': Rupa Huq reviews 'Taken as Red'

London, 4 July: 10pm exit poll | Image by: Ron Fassbender / Alamy Stock Photo

Rupa Huq MP

@RupaHuq

Andy Warhol’s claim that in the future everyone would be famous for 15 minutes is given credence by this historical account of an era that ended a little over 100 days ago. With a series of vivid pen portraits, Anushka Asthana casts a spotlight on some of the figures in the shadows that made the 2024 election campaign what it was. The Isaac Levidos, Liam Booths, Jill Cuthbertsons and Morgan McSweeneys come to life – the latter subject of his own chapter entitled “the Morganiser”. At the book’s launch event, many of the cast of characters jostled together in a smart venue over the road from Parliament, including current and former cabinet ministers, all furiously thumbing to the index to see whether they were in it. Spoiler alert: I am on page 18 and there is no index.

Even though we know how it ends, it still manages to be a page-turner. With her pacy narrative style, Asthana’s book starts with the July landslide then steps back in time to weave its way forward through Brexit, Covid, then the premierships of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss the lettuce, to the 2024 election campaign and Rishi Sunak’s missteps, right up to riots in Southport this summer via the election night and cabinet appointments. Reflections on the Lib Dems and fun-loving Ed Davey, the Green advance – and (although less discussed) the victorious pro-Gaza Independent MPs – are termed “fragmentation”.

Spoiler alert: I am on page 18 and there is no index

The main questions this book attempts to answer are how Labour turned around the gaping electoral gulf of 2019 to trounce the Tories by an even bigger landslide than Johnson’s – and whether Sunak could have ever succeeded given the situation he inherited. There is also an interesting sub-discussion on whether prime minister Sunak’s ethnicity was a limitation on his success – with Asthana throwing in some confessional biographical stuff of her own.

There are some obvious perils in publishing a book like this at comparatively lightning speed, setting out a constantly unfolding situation in black and white typeface. Since the book went to press we have witnessed the first Labour Party conference whilst in power for many a moon, the freebies scandal – and the shock resignations of outspoken Labour MP Rosie Duffield and the best-known of all the backroom fixers, Sue Gray. Lord Alli does get mentioned, ditto Gray, but they are not dwelt on in great detail; we all know a whole lot more now. The total of 411 Labour MPs elected on 4 July has already reduced with seven rebels suspended after an early vote against the party whip on the two-child benefit cap and the forementioned Duffield’s resignation. Still, we are perhaps half a decade away from the next general election.

Asthana concludes by attributing much of Labour’s success to Keir Starmer’s own ruthlessness and the sheer efficiency of Labour’s targeted ground operation whereby slightly over a third of all votes cast translated into over 60 per cent of the seats. All students of Starmerism – and the vanquished Conservatives plunged into yet another leadership race – would do well to examine this book closely and take heed. 

Rupa Huq is Labour MP for Ealing Central and Acton

Taken as Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party
By: Anushka Asthana
Publisher: HarperNorth

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