1988 - 1997

The day Paddy Ashdown became leader of the Social and Liberal Democrats (subsequently the Liberal Democrats), he began to keep a diary. The Ashdown Diaries is a key, first-hand account of the efforts to build a centre left strategy for defeating the Conservatives, an unprecedented insight into the management and structure of a modern political party, and the daily record of one of public life's most energetic and charismatic figures. Culminating in Blair and Ashdown's secret plans to oust the Conservatives in 1997, this book draws the reader day by day into the immediate political past, from Ashdown's early struggle to rescue his party from oblivion through to the intense personal and political pressures of the 1992 election, from Europe's failure in the Balkans and the cease-fire in Northern Ireland to John Major's fina l, crushing nemesis.