Easy listening but surprisingly shrewd

The author gives away his centrist or mildly right-leaning preferences at certain points, I think, but despite perhaps giving a little too much credence to the declarations of the BNP and UKIP, still has an admirably firm grasp on the extreme left groups in UK politics. Memorably this includes being able to place journalist Paul Mason as former Workers’ Power and differentiate between the Socialist Party Scotland and the Scottish Socialist Party.

This grasp of a deeper reality than ever gets accounted for in mainstream journalism is the strength of the book. There are the usual low points of Britain’s 21st Century political story, such as the vacuousness and arrogance of the political class when faced with real people (cf. Blair and Sharon Storer, Brown and Gillian Duffy). There are the egos, like Galloway. There is the pervasive breaches of trust, from lies over Iraq to lies over immigration.

The book captures very well the implosion of Gordon Brown’s government and there are hints of an alternative path not taken, in which a Labour government acted decisively to support left-behind working class people, with the same determination as they acted to support the global financial system, thereby exposing Cameron for the vapid marketing executive he was.

It’s in the willingness to accept Cameron and Osborne and even Iain Duncan Smith (and his Easterhouse conversion) on their own terms that the author betrays a little of his own prejudice. These people were crooks, in more sophisticated ways than the New Labour nest featherers, but crooks nonetheless, or else they were murderous ideologues whose war on the disabled came with a body count in the tens of thousands. This prejudice is also evident in the occasional knee jerk dismissals of Corbyn and his project as “Stop the War take over the Labour Party…two lost general elections” without diving into the five million votes Corbyn picked up over Gordon “I Saved the World” Brown”.

The characters of our would-be leaders are well evinced, and memorable encounters - Farage’s pasting by the unbearably smug James O’Brien on LBC, for example - are recounted. It’s very easy listening. The moral theme is the indifference of the political class to working class people, and the tendency to write anyone off as racist if they question the benevolence of our lords and masters in failing to provide the support required to adequately care for a nation of sixty million people. This is surely the key lesson of the age, couldn’t agree more, political quibbles aside, and it is outlined with verve and wit. I enjoyed this immensely over the course of only two or three sittings to complete the whole book.

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Witty, speedy contemporary histry

This was a witty, occasionally acerbic, often thoughtful book that covered the major themes and developments of very recent Britain history. I hope the publisher thinks about producing audiobooks of Turner's earlier histories of the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

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Two stars for the work put in.

If I'd wanted a hagiography of Nigel Farage, I'd have sought one out. Disappointing.

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Modern history but nothing new.

There is nothing here that anyone who has shown an interest in this type of thing and who has a reasonable short term memory won't know. Having said that, I have an interest in this type of thing and a reasonable short term memory and I enjoyed it, well enough. Good for news junkies.

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