Review: This Land: The Story of a Movement

This Land: The Story of a Movement by Owen Jones
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rounding up from 3.5. Jones covers Labour's Corbyn in a very readable, journalistic style and he has a number of close contacts in the party - indeed, with his links to John McDonnell he was in the room for some major events.

It's clear that Corbyn is a decent man, completely ill-suited for leading a political party and surrounded by people not equipped to run a 21st Century campaign - not helped by several members of the PLP and HQ actively wanting Corbyn to fail. Indeed from my own limited experience campaigning for the Labour Party, it always seemed chaotic and badly focused - endless volunteer's goodwill and time misdirected and squandered.

I don't know if there will ever be a definitive book of this period, with the factionalism making an even-handed account difficult but this is as probably as close to it as there will be. I don't agree with Jones that McDonnell would have been a better leader, he would have been hamstrung by the exact same obstacles as Corbyn both internally and externally, but certainly agree that Brexit did in Labour's terrible 2019 campaign.

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