This Land: The Struggle for the Left

In This Land, Owen Jones provides an insider's honest and unflinching appraisal of the Labour party's 2019 electoral defeat, exploring where the Left goes next in the new world.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 368 pages
Publication date: 29 April 2021
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

In a time of great upheaval, the global crisis of Covid-19 has exposed the profound social and economic inequalities that have been the toxic legacy of austerity. These revolutionary times present an opportunity for a radical reimagining of Britain as we know it, as the politically impossible becomes imaginable. However, the Left's last attempt to upend the established order and transform millions of lives came to a catastrophic end on 12th December 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its worst electoral defeat since 1935.

In his book, "This Land," Owen Jones offers an insider's honest and unflinching appraisal of a movement: how it promised to change everything, why it went so badly wrong, where this failure leaves its values and ideas, and where the Left goes next in the new world we find ourselves in. He takes us on a compelling, page-turning journey through a tumultuous decade in British politics, gaining unprecedented access to key figures across the political spectrum. It is a tale of high hopes and hubris, dysfunction and disillusionment. Jones urges.

He urges that there is no future for any progressive project that does not face up to and learn from its errors. We have the opportunity to build a fairer country and a more equal world, but if our time is to come, then we must learn from our past.

An absorbing, nuanced account of the making of electoral disaster, Gaby Hinsliff, Guardian

Weight: 272g
Dimension: 196 x 128 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780141994390