Book picks similar to
Beyond the Red Wall: Why Labour Lost, How the Conservatives Won and What Will Happen Next? by Deborah Mattinson
politics
non-fiction
british-politics
social
Comrade Corbyn: A Very Unlikely Coup: How Jeremy Corbyn Stormed to the Labour Leadership
Rosa Prince - 2016
The book also examines his early life in rural Shropshire, his support for contentious causes such as Palestinian freedom and a peace process in Northern Ireland.
Why Romney Lost
David Frum - 2012
David Frum urges a Republican party that is culturally modern, economically inclusive, and environmentally responsible - a party that can meet the challenges of the Obama years and lead a diverse America to a new age of freedom and prosperity.
This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto
Suketu Mehta - 2019
The West, he argues, is being destroyed not by immigrants but by the fear of immigrants. He juxtaposes the phony narratives of populist ideologues with the ordinary heroism of labourers, nannies and others, from Dubai to New York, and explains why more people are on the move today than ever before. As civil strife and climate change reshape large parts of the planet, it is little surprise that borders have become so porous.This Land is Our Land also stresses the destructive legacies of colonialism and global inequality on large swathes of the world. When today’s immigrants are asked, ‘Why are you here?’, they can justly respond, ‘We are here because you were there.’ And now that they are here, as Mehta demonstrates, immigrants bring great benefits, enabling countries and communities to flourish.Impassioned, rigorous, and richly stocked with memorable stories and characters, This Land Is Our Land is a timely and necessary intervention, and literary polemic of the highest order.
Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus
Donald Low - 2014
The consensus that the PAP government has constructed and maintained over five decades is fraying. The assumptions that underpin Singaporean exceptionalism are no longer accepted as easily and readily as before. Among these are the ideas that the country is uniquely vulnerable, that this vulnerability limits its policy and political options, that good governance demands a degree of political consensus that ordinary democratic arrangements cannot produce, and that the country’s success requires a competitive meritocracy accompanied by relatively little income or wealth redistribution. But the policy and political conundrums that Singapore faces today are complex and defy easy answers. Confronted with a political landscape that is likely to become more contested, how should the government respond? What reforms should it pursue? This collection of essays suggests that a far-reaching and radical rethinking of the country's policies and institutions is necessary, even if it weakens the very consensus that enabled Singapore to succeed in its first fifty years.
The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour
Peter Mandelson - 2010
Peter Mandelson tells his story of a life played out in the back rooms and on the front lines of the Labour Party during its unprecedented three terms in government in this mixture of autobiography, personal reflection, and political history. He began writing the book while serving as European Commissioner and completed it since leaving office in May 2010. His revelations include that the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown became so hostile that Blair described his chancellor as "mad, bad, dangerous, and beyond redemption" and likened Brown's behaviour to that of a "mafioso" in his dealings with him. Much has been written about Mandelson as the person at the heart of the New Labour project, but here is the unvarnished truth from the man himself.
Election Notebook: The Inside Story Of The Battle Over Britain’s Future And My Personal Battle To Report It
Nick Robinson - 2015
This is Nick‘s behind-the-scenes account of his encounters with David Cameron, who many wrote off before the shock victory he called his 'sweetest'; Ed Miliband, who turned abuse & ridicule into respect before leading Labour to its worst defeat in a generation; Nick Clegg, who led his party into power and then to humiliation and near oblivion; Nigel Farage, who rose so fast and then fell at the final hurdle; Alex Salmond, whose public clash with Nick led to thousands protesting outside the BBC’s Scottish HQ, and Nicola Sturgeon, whose stunning success as SNP leader has put Scottish independence back on the map.The result is an extraordinary narrative, characterized by Nick Robinson’s trademark insight, analysis and backstage gossip, of an adrenaline-fuelled year which culminated in a captivating election that transformed Britain’s political landscape.
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Edward S. Herman - 1988
Herman and Noam Chomsky show that, contrary to the usual image of the news media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and defense of justice, in their actual practice they defend the economic, social, and political agendas of the privileged groups that dominate domestic society, the state, and the global order.Based on a series of case studies—including the media’s dichotomous treatment of “worthy” versus “unworthy” victims, “legitimizing” and “meaningless” Third World elections, and devastating critiques of media coverage of the U.S. wars against Indochina—Herman and Chomsky draw on decades of criticism and research to propose a Propaganda Model to explain the media’s behavior and performance. Their new introduction updates the Propaganda Model and the earlier case studies, and it discusses several other applications. These include the manner in which the media covered the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and subsequent Mexican financial meltdown of 1994-1995, the media’s handling of the protests against the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund in 1999 and 2000, and the media’s treatment of the chemical industry and its regulation. What emerges from this work is a powerful assessment of how propagandistic the U.S. mass media are, how they systematically fail to live up to their self-image as providers of the kind of information that people need to make sense of the world, and how we can understand their function in a radically new way.
The Death of the Liberal Class
Chris Hedges - 2010
It gives moral legitimacy to the state. It makes limited forms of dissent and incremental change possible. The liberal class posits itself as the conscience of the nation. It permits us, through its appeal to public virtues and the public good, to define ourselves as a good and noble people. Most importantly, on behalf of the power elite the liberal class serves as bulwarks against radical movements by offering a safety valve for popular frustrations and discontentment by discrediting those who talk of profound structural change. Once this class loses its social and political role then the delicate fabric of a democracy breaks down and the liberal class, along with the values it espouses, becomes an object of ridicule and hatred. The door that has been opened to proto-fascists has been opened by a bankrupt liberalism The Death of the Liberal Class examines the failure of the liberal class to confront the rise of the corporate state and the consequences of a liberalism that has become profoundly bankrupted. Hedges argues there are five pillars of the liberal establishment – the press, liberal religious institutions, labor unions, universities and the Democratic Party— and that each of these institutions, more concerned with status and privilege than justice and progress, sold out the constituents they represented. In doing so, the liberal class has become irrelevant to society at large and ultimately the corporate power elite they once served.
Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism
Sheldon S. Wolin - 2006
But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In "Democracy Incorporated," Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"?Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level."Democracy Incorporated" is one of the most worrying diagnoses of America's political ills to emerge in decades. It is sure to be a lightning rod for political debate for years to come."
The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart
Bill Bishop - 2008
This social transformation didn't happen by accident. We’ve built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood -- and religion and news show -- most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don’t know and can’t understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this groundbreaking work.In 2004, the journalist Bill Bishop, armed with original and startling demographic data, made national news in a series of articles showing how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into alarmingly homogeneous communities -- not by region or by red state or blue state, but by city and even neighborhood. In The Big Sort, Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.The Big Sort will draw comparisons to Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone and Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class and will redefine the way Americans think about themselves for decades to come.
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
Peter Pomerantsev - 2014
It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship-far subtler than twentieth-century strains-that is rapidly rising to challenge the West.When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system.Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.
Mail Men: The Story of the Daily Mail – the Paper that Divided and Conquered Britain
Adrian Addison - 2015
Charting the controversy that has always dogged the publication — from its flirtation with fascism in the 1930s to its fractious relationship with celebrities today, Addison explains how the divisive paper has shaped British journalism and, indeed, Britain itself.With colorful portraits of rambunctious life behind the masthead (discover why one corridor is dubbed "scary" by staffers), Mail Men includes fascinating biographical details of key figures in the history of the paper — including idiosyncratic boss Paul Dacre, unrivaled moral arbiter for Middle England and the highest paid newspaper editor in the U.K.Drawing on interviews with over 100 of the paper’s journalists, past and present — as well as fans, victims, and critics — this is the uncut story of the Mail Men who created and ran the paper, and the underlings who were expected to give their lives to this peculiarly British institution.
Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings
Pyotr Kropotkin - 1927
An invaluable addition to the libraries of instructors, students, and anyone interested in history, government, and anarchist thought.
Britain Alone: The Path from Suez to Brexit
Philip Stephens - 2021
Nearly 60 years later, the rebuke rings true again. Britain's postwar search for its place in the world has vexed prime ministers and government since the nation's great victory in 1945: the cost of winning the war was giving up the empire. After the humiliation of Anthony Eden's Suez expedition, Britain seemed for a time to have found an answer. Clinging to its self-image as a great island nation, it would serve as America's best friend while acknowledging its geography by signing up to membership of the European Union. Never a comfortable balancing act, for 40 years it appeared to work. In 2016 David Cameron called the Brexit referendum and blew it up. Author Philip Stephens paints a fascinating portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile its waning power with past glory. Drawing on decades of personal contact and interviews with senior politicians and diplomats in Britain, the United States and across the capitals of Europe, Britain Alone is a vivid account of a proud nation struggling to admit it is no longer a great power. It is a guide to how we arrived at the state we are in.
The Vanishing of Flight MH370: The True Story of the Hunt for the Missing Malaysian Plane
Richard Quest - 2016
The airplane’s whereabouts and fate would quickly become one of the biggest aviation mysteries of our time... Richard Quest, CNN’s Aviation Correspondent, was one of the leading journalists covering the story. In a coincidence, Quest had interviewed one of the two pilots a few weeks before the disappearance. It is here that he begins his gripping account of those tense weeks in March, presenting a fascinating chronicle of an international search effort, which despite years of searching and tens of millions of dollars spent has failed to find the plane. Quest dissects what happened in the hours following the plane’s disappearance and chronicles the days and weeks of searching, which led to nothing but increasing despair. He takes apart the varying responses from authorities and the discrepancies in reports, the wide range of theories, the startling fact that the plane actually turned around and flew in the opposite direction, and what solutions the aviation industry must now implement to ensure it never happens again. What emerges is a riveting chronicle of a tragedy that continues to baffle everyone from aviation experts to satellite engineers to politicians—and which to this day worries the traveling public that it could happen again. INCLUDES PHOTOS