Douglas Beattie

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DOUGLAS Beattie was one of the entertaining ones during his time as a Camden councillor.

On his feet in the chamber or asking questions at committee meetings, he was like a smart barrister politely peeling away an argument, albeit with an obvious dislike for the Tories. His loyalty to the Labour Party maybe stopped him going too far with constructive criticism, but he was the kind of probing friend on the backbenches that any regime needs.

Not everyone may agree but that’s Labour, and, as the blurb on his new book says, Beattie is fascinated with its tribal nature. It is laid bare in How Labour Wins (And Why It Loses), a pacy party history from 1900 onwards.

Here will be a particularly worthy stocking filler for any politico wanting to press pause and reflect on all that’s gone on in the past frantic 10 to 20 years.

Hot off the press, it even includes analysis of this year’s general election. While you may guess where his true feelings lie, Beattie clearly has the trust of key figures from across the different groups and factions, and tells the story with a range of insider perspectives.

It is a lot deeper than the lazy response that the party has always been a broad church.

He takes us behind the scenes of the winning Labour campaigns, but the dissection scalpel really comes out on the ones where things didn’t go so well.

We sit in on fractious party conferences and the internal conversations which were often never resolved. Maybe they still aren’t.

There is a missed moment with Ed Miliband, one of Mr Beattie’s near neighbours – well, in Camden, a lot of the players are, Sir Keir Starmer included.

It’s explained that he was still having to face David Cameron waving around Liam Byrne’s stupidly arrogant note about Labour leaving no money for the next government.

This book makes the case for Gordon Brown being a better chancellor than that.

Labour thought it should have been on the brink of power in 2015, but came closer with Miliband’s successor, Jeremy Corbyn. Beattie is generous to Corbyn’s time in charge, without appearing slavish.

The lack of clarity on Brexit is presented again as an obvious difference between the 2017 near miss – which Beattie points out left Corbyn only 2,000 votes short of reaching Downing Street – and the near wipeout which followed on his second try two years later.

It will be interesting to see what Beattie makes of Sir Keir’s start as prime minister in a later edition or another book entirely, and whether he thinks he can win again in less favourable conditions or against a more organised opposition.

As the writer reports on the power changeover from Brown – who is among the weighty figures who give generously with their insights for this book ­– to the Conservatives and Lib Dem alliance, there will be a familiarity for those who might have expected a more compassionate landing from Labour’s arrival.

“The defining characteristic of the years after Gordon Brown was replaced by David Cameron in Downing Street was a series of austerity measures which hurt the weakest in British society,” Beattie explains.

“These were imposed without any prior mention of them in either of the coalition parties’ 2010 manifestoes.”

This was sold, he recalls, as needing to battle an economic deficit.

It’s the kind of paragraph which makes you wonder whether British politics is simply on a rotating wheel – just with more blue spots to land on than red when it comes to the history of general elections.

But the spats, drama and memories along the way will all come flooding back with this lively, convincing read.