[1][2] After working as a barrister and senior civil servant, Starmer became a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Labour Party, a centre-left political party in the United Kingdom that acted as the main political opposition to the centre-right Conservative government.

In the 2020 leadership election, Starmer ran on both a soft left and centrist platform,[3][4] and suspended Corbyn from the Parliamentary Labour Party in January 2021.

Labour failed to maintain its coalition of voters at the 2019 national election, in which party policy was to campaign for a second Brexit referendum.

[1] In the New Statesman, Richard Seymour calls the book "[t]he most detailed study of the Labour leader" and "the best account of his leadership so far".

[10] The Independent's Andrew Grice described the book as a "cogent left-wing critique" of Starmer's Labour leadership.

[12] Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Tom Harris gave the book two out of five stars, criticising its defence of Corbyn's political positions and accusing it of left-wing bias.

Harris said that some of the book's content was valid, but Eagleton's bias had made it "difficult to take the rest of his political agenda seriously".