Owen Jones: Books that moved us forward in 2017

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Reading lists

The Struggle for the Left

This Land

A GUARDIAN, NEW STATESMAN AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 
 
'A whodunnit political page-turner' Melissa Benn, New Statesman 
 
'The best political book I have read for a long while' Rod Liddle, The Spectator 
 
From the No.1 bestselling author of The Establishment, an urgent analysis of where the Left - and Britain - goes next 
 
We live in an age of upheaval. The global crisis of Covid-19 has laid bare the deep social and economic inequalities which were the toxic legacy of austerity. These revolutionary times are an opportunity for a radical rethink of Britain as we know it, as the politically impossible suddenly becomes imaginable. 
 
And yet, the Left's last attempt to upend the established order and transform millions of lives came to a crashing halt on 12th December 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its worst electoral defeat since 1935. In This Land, Owen Jones provides an insider's honest and unflinching appraisal of a movement: how it promised to change everything, why it went so badly wrong, where this failure leaves its values and ideas, and where the Left goes next in the new world we find ourselves in. 
 
He takes us on a compelling, page-turning journey through a tumultuous decade in British politics, gaining unprecedented access to key figures across the political spectrum. It is a tale of high hopes and hubris, dysfunction and disillusionment. There is, Jones urges, no future for any progressive project that does not face up to and learn from its errors. We have the opportunity to build a fairer country and a more equal world, but if our time is to come, then we must learn from our past. 
 
'An absorbing, nuanced account of the making of electoral disaster' Gaby Hinsliff, Guardian

Owen Jones has managed to produce a whodunnit political page-turner and a surprisingly fair account (given that Jones was a player in the Corbyn project) of both an inspiring and tortuous period of Labour history.

An absorbing, nuanced account of the making of electoral disaster.

Very, very powerful ... you will not come away from reading This Land without your understanding of what happened to the Labour Party over the last five years massively enhanced.

For Owen Jones, the drama of these years is almost Shakespearean... Where Jones is strongest, and impressively so, is when he turns his analytical gaze on his own side. His dissection of the anti-Semitism issue is heartfelt and intelligent. His account of the infighting and weakness of the leader's team rings true... He correctly observes that Brexit left Labour on a hook.

Jones has [a hard] task: to assess the failure of a project he championed, in which he was a significant player, and which depended on the work and was damaged by the flaws of people he is close to. It is a far more honest account of those difficulties than is ever given by journalists of the political centre, or the right ... Jones has made a serious attempt to understand the left's weaknesses as something other than the fault of the party's right ... Jones is making a brutal assessment, of the sort too often lacking in the past few years, of what is possible.

The best political book I have read for a long while, all the better for Jones's unashamed participant observation.

Owen Jones was born in Sheffield, grew up in Stockport and studied history at Oxford. His first book, the international bestseller Chavs, was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and chosen as one of The New York Times top 10 non-fiction books of 2011. In 2013 he won Young Writer of the Year at the Political Book Awards. His second book was the bestselling The Establishment: and How They Get Away With It, an exposé of Britain's powerful elites. He is a columnist for the Guardian and a frequent broadcaster.

We live in an age of upheaval. The global crisis of Covid-19 has laid bare the deep social and economic inequalities which were the toxic legacy of austerity. These revolutionary times are an opportunity for a radical rethink of Britain as we know it, as the politically impossible suddenly becomes imaginable. 
 
And yet, the Left's last attempt to upend the established order and transform millions of lives came to a crashing halt on 12th December 2019, when Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour party to its worst electoral defeat since 1935. In This Land, Owen Jones provides an insider's honest and unflinching appraisal of a movement: how it promised to change everything, why it went so badly wrong, where this failure leaves its values and ideas, and where the Left goes next in the new world we find ourselves in. 
 
He takes us on a compelling, page-turning journey through a tumultuous decade in British politics, gaining unprecedented access to key figures across the political spectrum. It is a tale of high hopes and hubris, dysfunction and disillusionment. There is, Jones urges, no future for any progressive project that does not face up to and learn from its errors. We have the opportunity to build a fairer country and a more equal world, but if our time is to come, then we must learn from our past.

And how they get away with it

The Establishment

THE PHENOMENAL BESTSELLER 
 
'Fantastic, timely, eye-opening' Armando Iannucci, New Statesman, Books of the Year 
'Captures a collective sense of anger and awakening' Matt Haig, Observer, Books of the Year 
 
Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Exposing the revolving doors that link these worlds, and the vested interests that bind them together, Jones shows how, in claiming to work on our behalf, the people at the top are doing precisely the opposite. In fact, they represent the biggest threat to our democracy today - and it is time they were challenged. 
 
'A book of revelations ... The Establishment have stitched it up - stitched you up - and they know it' Danny Dorling, Times Higher Education Supplement 
 
'A dissection of the profoundly and sickeningly corrupt state that is present-day Britain. He is a fine writer, and this is a truly necessary book' Philip Pullman 
 
'Owen Jones is a phenomenon of our times' David Kynaston, The Times Literary Supplement 
 
 'You will be enlightened and angry' Irvine Welsh

I'll never look at UK class politics in the same way after Owen Jones's bracing and principled The Establishment

I am delighted to see social class storm its way back into our contemporary history: Owen Jones's The Establishment offers a well-documented as well as searing critique of the groupthink that binds together our rulers

This is the most important book on the real politics of the UK in my lifetime, and the only one you will ever need to read. You will be enlightened and angry

Owen Jones displays a powerful combination of cool analysis and fiery anger in this dissection of the profoundly and sickeningly corrupt state that is present-day Britain. He is a fine writer, and this is a truly necessary book

Thorough and admirably vivid ... he is excellent on how the state has become a creature of capital, controlled by the corporate sector. As Jones shows, British capitalism is highly dependent on state largesse and rich corporations are the biggest scroungers of all

Powerful . . . The book's great strength lies in the simple power of accumulation. Again and again, Jones connects the dots in parallel lines, so that the single examples that might in themselves be dismissed as circumstantial or overblown become more or less unanswerable . . . He is a writer of real rhetorical force

A passionate account of political and economic injustice

A book of revelations... The last time the British Establishment was so intertwined, so arrogant and so powerful was a century ago, and the last democratic revolution that redistributed wealth took a lifetime to play out

An important book ... a systematic critique of the various political, corporate and economic institutions that seek to consolidate the interests of the few at the expense of the many ... Jones has the establishment clutching at their little golden straws ... It is not an easy road, Jones argues, but if we show strength and solidarity - perhaps adding a little common sense - we can reinstate true democracy and thus prioritize the needs of the many

The breadth of Jones' research is impressive ... the chapter on the recent history of ideas is fascinating ... the sections on corporate tax-avoidance, the lobbying industry and the sell-off of the NHS ought to have genuine British taxpayers spitting with rage. Jones ultimately sees his Establishment not as the guardians of British values but as a threat to them

In many respects, Owen Jones is the best thing to happen to the non-compromised, non-New Labour left in the mainstream media in decades ... On the post-1979 'establishment' Jones is very strong indeed

Owen Jones is a phenomenon of our times ... He asks some familiar questions, but with a compelling urgency ... he is systematically interested in the underlying mentality, and not just the behaviour, of his subjects, giving his study a refreshing and crucial extra dimension

Owen Jones was born in Sheffield, grew up in Stockport and studied history at Oxford. His first book, the international bestseller Chavs, was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award and chosen as one of the New York Times top 10 non-fiction books of 2011. In 2013 he won Young Writer of the Year at the Political Book Awards. His second book is the bestselling The Establishment: and How They Get Away With It, an exposé of Britain's powerful elites. He is a columnist for the Guardian and a frequent broadcaster.

Behind our democracy lurks a powerful but unaccountable network of people who wield massive power and reap huge profits in the process. In exposing this shadowy and complex system that dominates our lives, Owen Jones sets out on a journey into the heart of our Establishment, from the lobbies of Westminster to the newsrooms, boardrooms and trading rooms of Fleet Street and the City. Exposing the revolving doors that link these worlds, and the vested interests that bind them together, Jones shows how, in claiming to work on our behalf, the people at the top are doing precisely the opposite. In fact, they represent the biggest threat to our democracy today - and it is time they were challenged.

And How We Build It

The Alternative

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
We know our world's unequal. But, says Owen Jones, it doesn't have to stay that way. No status quo simply dissolves of its own accord: it must be replaced with something else. 
 
Without a real alternative that attracts the belief of millions of people, things will stay the same, if only because it's impossible for many to imagine things looking any different. 
 
The Alternative tells us that change is possible, desirable and even inevitable - if we want it. 
 
Owen goes in search of the people who are already making change happen: from the US and the UK to Latin America, from the struggles of Hungarian and Turkish dissidents working against authoritarian governments to the millions-strong anti-austerity movement in Spain. On his travels, he gathers evidence on how an economy can be built for the many rather than being a racket for the few; how we can reboot welfare states, education systems and health services for the twenty-first century; and, last but not least, how we can build enough decent homes for people to live in. 
 
All this, he shows, must happen through renewed democracy: it is only democracy that can take on inequality and injustice. There is an alternative. We just have to learn how to make it happen. This book shows us how. 
 
©2024 Owen Jones (P)2024 Penguin Audio

I'll never look at UK class politics in the same way

Born in Sheffield and raised in Stockport, Owen Jones is one of the UK’s most prominent political thinkers and writers. He is the author of the critically acclaimed No. 1 bestsellers The Establishment: How They Get Away With It and Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class; his books have been translated into ten languages. He writes regularly for the Guardian, and has two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show and The Owen Jones Podcast.

We know our world's unequal. But, says Owen Jones, it doesn't have to stay that way. No status quo simply dissolves of its own accord: it must be replaced with something else. 
 
Without a real alternative that attracts the belief of millions of people, things will stay the same, if only because it's impossible for many to imagine things looking any different. 
 
The Alternative tells us that change is possible, desirable and even inevitable - if we want it. 
 
Owen goes in search of the people who are already making change happen: from the US and the UK to Latin America, from the struggles of Hungarian and Turkish dissidents working against authoritarian governments to the millions-strong anti-austerity movement in Spain. On his travels, he gathers evidence on how an economy can be built for the many rather than being a racket for the few; how we can reboot welfare states, education systems and health services for the twenty-first century; and, last but not least, how we can build enough decent homes for people to live in. 
 
All this, he shows, must happen through renewed democracy: it is only democracy that can take on inequality and injustice. There is an alternative. We just have to learn how to make it happen. This book shows us how.

Owen Jones

How They Really Lost It

Almost everywhere we turn these days, there’s talk of a West in decline. Our jobs, our values, our past are all under attack, in the face of which we have become immersed in self-loathing, gone weak at the knees: the West needs to be Made Great Again. We know where this toxic narrative comes from: the nationalist, nativist Right. And now it’s gone mainstream. 
 
The thing is, the West is in decline, self-evidently so. But the truth is that it’s not migrants or Muslims or a woke mob which has brought the West to the edge of catastrophe. It’s good, old-fashioned hubris. 
 
In this blistering new book, Owen Jones explores how, amid the triumphalist sugar rush that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West came to believe that its rule, its economic order, its moral values, would endure for ever – and how, over a quarter-century, this brittle self-mythologising narrative collapsed in on itself. From Afghanistan and Iraq, to the economic crash of 2008 and Gaza today, he takes us on a journey to show how the West went from scoring what it believed was its final victory, to being engulfed in an existential crisis of its own making. And how, along the way, it fashioned an ugly new story: that this was the fault of the most vulnerable groups in society, rather than a power-hungry, venal ruling class. 
 
Today, as the Atlantic alliance struggles to hold itself together, The Fall of the West exposes how a generation of Western elites bent on power and self-enrichment at any cost fatally overreached itself, and argues that, if we are to find the solutions to our age of crisis, we must first understand the real reasons for how the West lost it.

Owen Jones

Books by Owen Jones

Articles featuring Owen Jones

Owen Jones: Books that moved us forward in 2017

Videos

Will We See The End Of Capitalism? | Owen Jones | Big Questions

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