On
18th April 2017, Theresa May stunned Britain by announcing a snap
election. With poll leads of more than 20 points over Jeremy Corbyn’s
divided Labour Party, the first Tory landslide since Margaret Thatcher’s day
seemed certain.
Seven
weeks later, Tory dreams had turned to dust. Instead of the 100-seat victory
she’d been hoping for, May had lost her majority, leaving Parliament hung and
her premiership hanging by a thread. Labour MPs, meanwhile, could
scarcely believe their luck. Far from delivering the wipe-out that most
predicted, Corbyn’s popular, anti-austerity agenda won the party 30 seats,
cementing his position as leader and denying May the right to govern
alone.
This timely and indispensable book gets to the bottom of why the
Tories failed, and how Corbyn’s Labour overcame impossible odds to emerge
closer to power than at any election since the era of Tony Blair. Who was
to blame for the Tories’ mistakes? How could so many politicians and pollsters
fail to see what was coming? And what was the secret of Corbyn’s
apparently unstoppable rise?
Through
new interviews and candid private accounts from key players, political
journalists Tim Ross and Tom McTague set out to answer these questions and
more, piecing together the inside story of this most
dramatic and important of elections.
