Owen Jones gives an meticulous, balanced and insightful history of Corbyn leadership. It’s engaging even if you know how the story went - and does have some things that only Owen would know, given his access and contact (he came up with the word ‘lexit’, who knew?).

It doesn’t feel like the story of a movement, though, focused as it is in the upper circles of politics. 2017 was indeed a movement, 2019 felt like we were still there on the ground, working harder if anything, but if we were the movement we didn’t move much.

It’s a tearful read in places, but important.

Five years ago, Jeremy Corbyn achieved the seemingly impossible. An amiable left-wing backbencher of some thirty years standing, his victory in the contest to succeed Ed Miliband was one of the most astounding political occurrences of the past fifty years. Yet four years later, his leadership ended in bitter failure. This insider's account from the talented left-wing writer Owen Jones, one of the first people to champion Corbyn's campaign in 2015, tells the story of this failure.
We will all have our own views of Jeremy Corbyn. However, this is a review of Owen Jones' book not of Corbyn himself. And Jones is frank about Corbyn's failings. He could be stubborn and badly organised. He totally mishandled the Brexit issue and the antisemitism row, two issues which totally derailed his leadership. On the other hand, Jones does not mince words on how Corbyn was betrayed by those within his own party and how less surprisingly he was brutally misrepresented and maligned by Britain's conservative media. Owen Jones' book is a thoughtful, well-written, balanced, intelligent and accessible account of a revolution which failed.

The number one best-selling author of Chavs and The Establishment returns with an urgent, revelatory account of where the left - and Britain - goes next. On 12th December 2019, the left died. That at least was the view of much of Britain's media and political establishment, who saw the electoral defeat of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party as the damning repudiation of everything it stood for. Yet, just over four years previously, the election of Corbyn as Labour leader seemed like a sea-change in politics: reanimating not just a party in apparently terminal decline but a country adrift, with a transformative vision based on a more just, more equal society and economy. In this revelatory new book, Owen Jones explores how these ideas took hold, how they promised to change the nature of British politics - and how everything then went profoundly, catastrophically wrong. Why did the left fail so badly? Where, in this most critical of times, does that failure leave its values and ideas? Where does it leave Britain itself? 

In This Land, Jones interviews approximately 170 Labour members at the very top of the party right down to grassroots activists to gain a flavour and real understanding of what went wrong in the 2019 election. The devastation of the left has sadly led to rising incidences of fatalism - where people believe they can no longer make a substantial contribution to politics and society through movements aimed at creating equality and promoting egalitarianism and can only merely tweak things here and there. He speaks the parties decision-makers during that time and together they try to come to a consensus of how it all went so badly wrong. It is effectively about the last five years of Corbyn's Labour, what it was up against and what it got wrong, both based on the inside accounts of those at the top and those looking in externally. An accessible, informative, fascinating and well written political piece. Many thanks to Allen Lane for an ARC.

Owen Jones' new book, This Land: The Story of a Movement, is an overview of the events of the last decade in the left political landscape with a particular focus on the Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. I joined the Labour Party in 2015, part of the huge amount of members who joined after being inspired by Jeremy Corbyn and his vision, and as of 2020, I have since left. My decision to leave was due to several factors all of which I won't detail here. I was generally quite well versed in the events Jones covers in this book and it is definitely a good overview of the major events that took place over the last few years. His analysis of things like Momentum's social media campaign was excellent and provided worthwhile insight into their successes and how that played into overall the successes in the 2017 General Election. He interviews and talks to several key people which is interesting and focuses on a kind of behind the scenes' depiction of events.
Unfortunately, I felt that his analysis was not consistent. He was pushing a particular angle; that John McDonnell would have done a better job; and that coloured the whole book, "it is a tragedy for the left that John McDonnell, long the Labour left's natural figurehead, never assumed the leadership". While everything that went wrong for 'the Corbyn project' was directly Corbyn's fault, everything that went right was attributed to somebody else. The book feels like a long-form justification for Owen Jones' own flip-flopping in regards to his support of the Labour leader. Jones couldn't remove himself from the narrative. While I understand that he was present for a lot of the things he discusses and disclosing that involvement is important, it felt more like he was trying to portray himself as a Cassandra type. It's useful having insight from those in the room when it happened but at times it felt more like he was trying to brag about how important he is rather than providing any real insight.
Regarding critical analysis, Jones provided a rather inconsistent narrative. For example, he would discuss the various studies that demonstrated that media coverage of Corbyn was overwhelmingly misrepresentative and negative but then wouldn't use this to create any sort of analysis of what impact this may have had. He talks to people who complain that "'He refused to play the game, he refused to do media trainings. He just felt it'd be selling out, that he wanted to be himself."' but in another section, he discusses Corbyn's "affable, zen-like demeanour on television. [Which allowed] Viewers [to] see the contrast between his media image- dangerous terrorist-loving extremist- and a reality which seemed poles apart". By having this in different parts, the overall cohesion comes across as inconsistent and incoherent. Which is he? Is he a zen-like figure who can win people over by being himself or is it a bad thing that he wouldn't 'play the game'? This happens with many things. One minute Jones is discussing how Corbyn couldn't commit to anything out of worry of upsetting people then he's being resolutely dogmatic about his principles. He discusses how Corbyn's policies inspired people and then claims "nobody in the office seemed to understand what policy was for". As an analysis, it didn't make sense and seemed like a series of different newspaper articles copied and pasted together. This could have been fixed if he responded to his sources. He presents them all unchallenged, meaning he doesn't question what they say when they contradict each other which if he had would have vastly improved the book.
Considering the subtitle of the book, The Story of a Movement, it is much more focused on the parliamentary Labour party and the Labour Party establishment rather than the members. He, of course, mentions the huge numbers of people who joined the party and Corbyn's incredible mandates in both leadership elections, but his interviewees are generally those working in Labour HQ or members of the press. In a topic such as this, the people outside of HQ need to be considered as well, rather than as an afterthought or as a statistic to prove a point.
I wanted to like this book and as an overview of the events, it is a good starting point. It just wasn't as good as some of his other works.

The style in a bit too tabloid in places.
Jones is way too close to give a balanced account of the Corbyn regime. I felt the leaked dossier of what's app messages from Labour HQ is used without caveat, whereas Karie Murphy is allowed to defend herself throughout.
It becomes a good read when Jones discusses the Brexit fiasco and the 2019 election debacle. What I took from this slight book was that Corbyn was a fundamentally decent man in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was just unable to make the tough decisions as a leader.

Not sure how many copies this can sell but good luck with it.