Starmer set up own Labour leadership team six months before Corbyn’s 2019 defeat

Keir Starmer’s team is said to have begun planning how he could capture the Labour leadership in June 2019, six months before the party’s election defeat. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Keir Starmer had assembled a leadership team about six months before the December 2019 general election that led to Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation as Labour leader.

The team, codenamed the “Arlington Group”, began planning in earnest how Starmer could capture the leadership from June of that year – including a detailed breakdown of how Labour’s membership could be convinced to support him.