Keir Starmer almost quit as Labour leader in the wake of a "kick in the guts" by-election defeat to the Tories in 2021.
According to a new extract of a biography of Mr Starmer, the Labour leader saw the loss of Hartlepool as a "personal rejection". The seat was previously held by Labour at every election since 1974 but the Tories under ex-PM Boris Johnson won with a majority of almost 7,000.
In the book written by the former Labour adviser Tom Baldwin, Mr Starmer said: "I felt like I had been kicked in the guts. The result was terrible and I had a moment where I thought we are not going to be able to do this". It claims Mr Starmer told his top advisers he was going to resign.
Former close aide to the Labour leader Chris Ward said: "Keir kept saying that he felt he would have to go, that the result showed the party was going backwards and he saw it as a personal rejection.I told him it was far too soon for that kind of thing, but it was a rocky few hours."
Mr Ward added: “Keir regards his role solely as a means to an end of achieving change. If he becomes the obstacle to it, he’ll get out of the way.” The extract claims the Labour leader's wife, Vic, was among those who urged him not to act too hastily. Another key figure was Morgan McSweeny, who remains Mr Starmer's highly influential director of campaigns.
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Mr Starmer is also quoted as saying: "I'm not fulfilling some lifelong dream here. I could happily work in the bookshop or something."
But in a remarkable turn around the polls now show Labour on course to form a government after the next general election for the first time in 14 years. Just days ago the party also demolished massive Tory majorities at two by-elections held in Wellingborough and Kingswood.
In a stonking victory Labour overturned an 18,000 majority in Wellingborough on a 28.5% swing - the second biggest from the Tories at a by-election since the Second World War. The swing is well beyond what Mr Starmer needs across the country at the general election later this year to form the first Labour government in 14 years.
Polling guru John Curtice said the Tories were in “deep, deep trouble” after the results and said it remained likely Mr Starmer will be the country's next Prime Minister. But Mr Starmer refused to get carried away, saying: “There’s more work to be done. As every football fan knows, you don’t win the league in February.”
Extracts of the book also detail Mr Starmer's distant relationship with his dad, Rodney, his mum Jo's illness, and his younger brother, Nick, who had learning difficulties. It reveals how a family friend Mary Seller wrote to the Labour leader to tell him how "proud" his dad was of him and would often watch BBC Parliament "in the hope of catching sight of Keir".
Ms Sellers continued to visit Rodney's house after his wife and the Labour leader's mum, Jo, who suffered from Still's disease, had passed away in 2015. She told the author his dad would "always be watching the BBC Parliament channel in the hope of catching sight of Keir".
"He may not have been able to tell him how proud he was of what he had achieved, but he was. He really was. Rod would always tell me that about him." Mr Starmer responded: "Mary told me something I didn't know: Dad was proud of me and loved me, even if he couldn't tell me to my face. And now its too late for me to tell him to his face that I was proud of him, that I loved him too."
The book published by Mr Baldwin later this month also includes a quote from Mr Starmer's powerful chief-of-staff, Sue Gray. The former Cabinet Office tackled rumours she was a spy during a career break from the civil service in the late 1980s where she ran a pub in Northern Ireland. But Ms Gray told the author: "I'm definitely not a spy - and no, I never have been."
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