Jeremy Corbyn and the Strange Rebirth of Labour England

Post-war Labour England wasn't a bad place to live, but after Labour s 2015 election defeat, the prospect of a healthier, happier and fairer country seemed more remote than ever.

Who would have predicted that career backbencher and serial rebel Jeremy Corbyn would be the one to breathe new life into a near moribund Labour Party? Defying all odds, and most commentators and pollsters, Labour staged a remarkable comeback at the 2017 election.

Love him or loathe him and most people feel one way or the other Corbyn represents a new hope, which everyone believed had been extinguished by the bitter hostility of the Thatcher era and the grubby triangulations of the Blair years.

Almost uniquely amongst European social democratic parties, Corbyn's party has rallied. It has turned its back on New Labour, membership is thriving and, at long last, the party is appealing to the young. Labour England wasn't dead it had merely been sleeping.

In Jeremy Corbyn and the Strange Rebirth of Labour England, Francis Beckett and Mark Seddon offer an alternative and refreshing take on the sad fate of Labour England over the past four decades. They then turn their attention to the extraordinary reversal of fortunes of the Corbyn years, and to what a new Labour England might look like with or without Corbyn.

Francis Beckett is an author, award-winning journalist and playwright. He has been a Labour Party press officer, a trade union head of communications, and president of the National Union of Journalists. His nineteen books include Clem Attlee, Fascist in the Family (which is about his own father) and 1956: The Year that Changed Britain. Mark Seddon was editor of Tribune for thirteen years and a member of Labour's ruling National Executive Committee for eight years, before becoming the first UN & New York correspondent for al Jazeera English TV. He has also worked for UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon and for Gordon Brown in his capacity as UN Special Envoy for Global Education. He has written for amongst others: the New York Times, Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, Daily Mail, The Spectator, New Statesman, Private Eye, The Oldie and Country Life. He is the author of Standing for Something: Life in the Awkward Squad.