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Category Archives: Books

The Big Society: the answer’s in the book

By Mark Pack | Sun 1st May 2011 - 9:26 am

One of the curios of some library campaigners extolling the virtues of books whilst also mocking the Big Society for supposedly being incomprehensible or non-existent is that there is a short, clear and well-written book which lays out just what it is. Conservative MP Jesse Norman’s book, The Big Society, is certainly not uncontroversial, but it makes a sufficiently strong and clear case to have received favourable comments from across the political spectrum on its publication last autumn, including from Labour MP Jon Cruddas.

At times the book seems to have two, almost contradictory, purposes – to persuade traditional Conservatives …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged big society, community politics, featured, jesse norman, jon cruddas, nick clegg and social mobility | 2 Comments

How to use politicians to get what you want

By Mark Pack | Wed 27th April 2011 - 11:58 am

Scott Colvin’s book has a delightful title and does a good job of living up to the high expectations it sets. Though there are plenty of books about politics in general and also about organising community campaigns, what Colvin’s book tries to do is carve out a niche by looking specifically at how to influence politicians and (despite their omission from the title) businesses. Whether it’s saving a local Post Office or dealing with a customer service disaster from an airline, his book sets out how to go about getting the result you want.

Helped by his own background in …

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Tagged bernard greaves, featured, gordon lishman and scott colvin | Leave a comment

So you want to be a political journalist?

By Mark Pack | Tue 19th April 2011 - 8:55 am

A sister title to Shane Greer’s So you want to be a politician?, Sheila Gunn’s So you want to be a political journalist? is a collection of thrity-two lively short chapters giving an insight into the life of a political journalist.

With an impressive cast of contributors, including Peter Riddell, Carolyn Quinn and Michael White, the book has plenty of insider information, presented usually in the style of lively anecdotal chats. This is not a tedious career advice book nor a studious academic tone but rather something that gives a flavour of what it is like to be a political journalist and how to get there.

MP Adam Holloway’s contribution is the one that turns sour on political journalism, explaining how he became so disillusioned with coverage of himself that he not only ceased writing a column for the local newspaper but also stopped sending out local news releases.

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Tagged adam holloway, benedict brogan, carolyn quinn, featured, ivor gaber, james landale, journalism, michael white, paul waugh, peter riddell, shane greer and sheila gunn | Leave a comment

Who are the greatest Liberal Prime Ministers who never were?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 3rd April 2011 - 3:23 pm

Mark Pack reviewed Francis Beckett’s new counterfactual collection, The Prime Ministers Who Never Were, on the Voice earlier this week — 14 ‘Big Beasts’ who, had the chips fallen differently, might have become premiers.

The list is mostly inevitable with a couple of intriguing outsiders: Austen Chamberlain, J R Clynes, Lord Halifax, Oswald Mosley, Herbert Morrison, Hugh Gaitskell, Rab Butler, George Brown, Norman Tebbit, Michael Foot, Denis Healey, Neil Kinnock, John Smith and David Miliband.

Voice readers will notice one evident fact: there’s not a single Liberal (or SDP) name among them. In some ways it’s not that surprising. After …

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Tagged david penhaligon, featured, herbert fisher, jo grimond, Mark Pack, nancy seear, paddy ashdown, roy jenkins and shirley williams | 16 Comments

The Prime Ministers who never were

By Mark Pack | Thu 31st March 2011 - 11:55 am

If only one crucial detail in history had turned out differently… such is the premise of many a work of fiction, especially counter-factual histories and time travelling science fiction tales. Yet for all the popularity of the well known piece of verse, “For the want of a nail the shoe was lost…” which culminates in a kingdom being lost, serious counter-factuals by experts in a field are rather rare.

Those who see themselves as proper academics have often looked down on counter-factuals as light entertainment for the not-so-serious, missing that, as The Guardian’s review of this book put it, “It’s …

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Tagged featured, henry purcell and peter cuthbertson | 6 Comments

How should the official opposition operate?

By Mark Pack | Fri 18th March 2011 - 10:27 am

‘Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’ is the full title for the largest non-government party in Parliament and has been around long enough for the oddity of its phrasing to be easily overlooked. But “Her Majesty’s”? And “Loyal”? They come from the idea that, however much those in power may wish the opposition to firmly stay out of power, there is a recognition that an effective Parliamentary democracy requires an effective opposition. “Loyal” too reflects the willingness of those who have lost an election to accept the result. Calmly leaving office, or accepting another period in opposition, may be a long established …

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Tagged gillian shephard, neil kinnock and nigel fletcher | 1 Comment

The four best books on the British general election of 2010

By Mark Pack | Wed 16th March 2011 - 10:25 am

Over the last few months, I’ve read (and mostly reviewed on this site) all the books I’ve found published so far about the 2010 general election and the subsequent coalition negotiations, not to mention a fair number about the political events leading up to the general election over the preceding years.

I’ve yet to read a book that is really bad, although many do have very similar content to each other. A few gems either have original content or present that common ground in particularly strong ways. So based on that here are my top four recommended books about the British …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged chris huhne, david laws, deborah mattinson, dennis kavanagh, lord ashcroft and philip cowley | 3 Comments

Britain Votes 2010: another book, but any more information?

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd March 2011 - 8:55 am

As with other post-election books such as Britain at the Polls, Britain Votes 2010 edited by Andrew Geddes and Jonathan Tonge faces a dual challenge. On the one hand the growth of online political coverage means there is much detailed analysis which appears months before books such as this come out, and on the other hand the revitalisation of the long-running Nuffield general election series means there is less room for a successful book such as this.

Britain Votes 2010 therefore, whilst a decent successor to the previous titles in the series, is also a book in part …

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Also posted in General Election | Tagged andrew geddes, david denver, jonathan tonge and justin fisher | Leave a comment

Predicting the future: we didn’t turn Japanese

By Mark Pack | Tue 15th February 2011 - 10:25 am

Shortly after the Conservative Party won its fourth general election in a row in 1992, a symposium met to consider the question of whether Britain – formerly a country with regularly rotating government between the two main parties – was turning into a political version of Japan, where the same party had been in power for nearly forty years.

Even between the event occurring and the publication of a book based on it, Turning Japanese? Britain with a Permanent Party of Government (eds. Helen Margretts and Gareth Smyth), political events in both countries had taken a dramatic turn. In Japan the LDP lost power, starting a period of much greater political fluidity with even subsequent LDP Prime Ministers struggling to restore their party’s previous dominance. Meanwhile in Britain the collapse of the Conservative Party’s economic policies following Britain’s enforced exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) quickly made the government appear very vulnerable, even if debates in Labour continued on whether, as John Smith preferred, one more heave was all that was needed or whether, as Tony Blair insisted on after John Smith’s death, a more radical reshaping of the party was required to win the next election.

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged barack obama, gareth smyth, helen margetts, japan, john curtice, john smith, robert waller, stephen harper, tony blair, vernon bogdanor and will hutton | 5 Comments

Britain at the Polls: four parts standard fare to five parts novel analysis

By Mark Pack | Fri 11th February 2011 - 10:25 am

The rise of online political coverage has done no harm to the mini-publishing boom brought about by a general election. In addition to the one-off books and the relatively new series there are some long running series that churn out a new edition for every general election. The Nuffield series is the most famous and longest-running but the Britain at the Polls series is a worthy and complimentary series. Its latest offering, Britain at the Polls 2010 (edited by Nicholas Allen and John Bartle), provides something extra even in the face of the latest Nuffield offering, The British …

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Also posted in General Election and Op-eds | Tagged john bartle and nicholas allen | Leave a comment

Ship of Fools: lessons from the Irish crash

By Mark Pack | Wed 9th February 2011 - 10:25 am

Fintan O’Toole’s Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger is a coruscating account of how the Irish boom turned into biter bust. The sharpness of the prose as O’Toole recounts a tale of property boom, tax evasion and dodgy banking practices both entertains and obscures.

Along the way we have a blizzard of names and details about tax dodging, back handers and absent regulation. We also have the bitter irony of the failed exposure of politicians. When politicians were exposed yet their political careers continued unimpeded, the message to other politicians was – look, it does you no …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged fintan o'toole and republic of ireland | 9 Comments

Back from the Brink: the extraordinary fall and rise of the Conservative Party

By Mark Pack | Tue 8th February 2011 - 10:25 am

Peter Snowdon’s history of the Conservative Party in opposition, quickly updated last year to include the final stage in their recovery, has four white men on its cover striding towards the reader – Cameron, Osborne, Hague and Clegg. It tells you immediately the sort of book that Back from the Brink: The extraordinary fall and rise of the Conservative Party is: tightly focused in on politics as seen from and carried out in Westminster.

This is an account of senior political figures and their political, policy and media manoeuvrings. The public feature very rarely (unlike in Deborah Mattinson’s memoirs from …

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Tagged conservative party, david cameron, featured, john howard, peter snowdon, tim montgomerie and william hague | 18 Comments

The technical details of electoral reform matter: Philip Salmon on electoral reform

By Mark Pack | Thu 3rd February 2011 - 9:55 am

The central thesis of Philip Salmon’s Electoral Reform at Work: Local Politics and National Parties 1832-1841 is that the details of the 1832 Great Reform Act matter because they had large and significant effects on the development of national politics and the embryonic modern party system.

Salmon investigates and illustrates how usually over-looked provisions, such as the introduction of electoral registers, encouraged the formation of semi-permanent political organisations at a local level with resulting frequent party conflict over electoral registration as people tried to get their supporters on the register and their opponents knocked off it.

Though in the Houses of …

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Tagged 1832 great reform act, electoral reform, featured, history and philip salmon | 2 Comments

The Challenge of Affluence

By Mark Pack | Tue 1st February 2011 - 10:25 am

Avner Offer’s The Challenge of Affluence starts with certainty and ends with doubt. “Affluence breeds impatience, and impatience undermines well-being”, states Offer at the start of Chapter 1. That theme runs through the book to his conclusion, but the lessons he draws from it are not as simple or confidently stated: “Well-being is more than having more. It is a balance between our own needs, and those of others, on whose goodwill and approbation our own well-being depends … I present these findings in the hope that they will make our choices appear not simpler and easier, but as …

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Tagged avner offer, jonathon porritt, richard layard, robert putnam and the spirit level | Leave a comment

The political thought of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats since 1945: book review

By Mark Pack | Wed 26th January 2011 - 10:25 am

Kevin Hickson’s volume, The political thought of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats since 1945, may be a short volume from an academic publisher with an academic book price tag to boot (look out for cheaper second-hand copies) but its contributors include many political practitioners. With Vince Cable, Steve Webb, David Howarth , Richard Grayson and Duncan Brack amongst them, this book has a very strong representation of people at the coalface of policy making rather than simply those who know of it only in theory.

As Hickson points out in the book’s introduction, the policies of the Liberal Democrats – even more so than other aspects of the history of the party and its predecessors since 1945 – have had very little coverage in books, an omission which this volume sets out to remedy and which political fortunes in the year after the book’s publication has made all the more useful a task to tackle.

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Also posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Tagged david howarth, duncan brack, kevin hickson, richard acland, richard grayson, social mobility, steve webb and vince cable | 1 Comment

Book review: Hung Together – The 2010 Election and the Coalition Government

By Mark Pack | Sun 23rd January 2011 - 8:55 am

Adam Boulton and Joey Jones, the authors of Hung Together: The 2010 Election and the Coalition Government, have produced a book of the sort that, after previous general elections, would have been deserving of praise and interest. Their bad luck for the 2010 election is that there are several high quality alternatives available, in particular the revitalised Nuffield general election series in the form of The British General Election of 2010 and David Laws’s 22 Days in May, not to mention the Nick Robinson BBC documentary.

Compared to those this lively book is a little lightweight. It does …

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Tagged adam boulton and joey jones | 3 Comments

Capitalism as if the world matters: Jonathan Porritt’s prescription for sustaintability

By Mark Pack | Tue 18th January 2011 - 10:25 am

First published in 2005 and issued in a revised edition in 2007, Jonathan Porritt’s Capitalism as if the world matters has played an important part in arguing the case that not only can capitalism and sustainability go together, but that a reformed version of capitalism is essential to achieving sustainability.

This view sets Porritt apart from many of his former colleagues of his from his six years as chair of the UK Ecology Party (now the Green Party) and another six heading up Friends of the Earth. It made – and makes – his book controversial in many green circles …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged environment, jonathon porritt and keynes | 7 Comments

Which Way’s Up? The long-term future of the coalition

By Mark Pack | Tue 11th January 2011 - 10:25 am

The rapid appearance since the formation of the Coalition of Conservative MP Nick Boles’s book Which Way’s Up? is a tribute to the speed with which Biteback turns round books – recognising that the previous slothful pace of much political publishing meant books were no longer able to capture the political weather. Boles’s book, by contrast, certainly does that and attracted immediate headlines about his support for a two-term coalition and for an electoral pact.

The heart of the book, however, is about policy rather than political tactics. Boles himself has long been a Conservative moderniser – “a Cameroon before …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged chris huhne, evan harris, nick boles and william gladstone | 13 Comments

Inside the Danger Zones: Paul Moorcraft on thirty years of war reporting

By Mark Pack | Mon 3rd January 2011 - 8:55 am

Paul Moorcraft’s account of his several decades touring the world’s violent trouble-spots as a journalist and some-time government representative entertains as well as informs. From Rhodesia in the 1970s through to his contemplation of pioneering a niche market in blind observers for African elections in 2010, Moorcraft’s account reflects plenty of the swagger of many war correspondents but with enough self-mockery to make the account illuminating and interesting rather than a macho display. Even the clichés about drinking and womanising journalists, which he seems to have often fulfilled to the maximum, are full of his own failings.

The result is a portrait of not only the countries he visited but also the breed that makes up war correspondents, with their bravery, their bravado and their desire to get the story and the footage even at great personal risk. The motivation for such story getting may often be as much ego as public service, but in the end the public benefits from people willing to take remarkable risks with their personal safety in the name of journalism.

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Tagged afghanistan, featured and paul moorcraft | 1 Comment

Book review: Lobbying by Lionel Zetter

By Mark Pack | Thu 30th December 2010 - 8:55 am

Lionel Zetter’s book, Lobbying: The Art of Political Persuasion, has become the default British guide to how lobbying works. A detailed publication of over 450 pages, it is a ‘how to’ guide for the profession that also acts as an introduction to lobbying for people whose encounter with the subject has previously been mainly through the medium of newspaper headlines about scandals.

It is an insider’s account – Zetter was voted Public Affairs Personality of the Year in 2008 by readers of Public Affairs News – and unashamedly argues about the benefits of lobbying in a democracy. As Zetter’s book …

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Tagged lionel zetter | 6 Comments

An unsatisfactory road back to power: Chris Cook’s history of the party

By Mark Pack | Tue 7th December 2010 - 8:57 am

The newly published seventh edition of Chris Cook’s A Short History of the Liberal Party, this time covering events up to 2010, is much like the previous editions. That is, unfortunately, a case of damning with faint praise.

The book deserves some praise. Above all, it exists – and Chris Cook has been one of the few to regularly take to print to record the party’s history. There are very few other books which cover the history of the party and its predecessors all in one volume. It provides a detailed electoral record of the Liberals, Alliance and then Liberal …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged chris cook | 2 Comments

5 Days to Power: could there have been a Lab-Lib Dem deal?

By Mark Pack | Thu 2nd December 2010 - 8:55 am

Conservative MP Rob Wilson’s book on the formation of a coalition government in May 2010, 5 Days to Power: The Journey to Coalition Britain, plays up the drama of the events, talking of how “Gordon Brown and David Cameron were both determined to do whatever was necessary to secure the position of Prime Minister” as if the story is one of a cliff-hanging drama which could have gone either way.

Whilst the outcome is certainly significant for British political history, what the book is far less convincing on is that there was really any serious chance of a Labour – …

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged david laws, ed balls, gordon brown, nick clegg, paddy ashdown and rob wilson | 3 Comments

22 Days in May by David Laws – book review

By Mark Pack | Mon 29th November 2010 - 10:27 am

Many insider accounts have already appeared of the events retold in David Laws’s book 22 Days in May: The Birth of the Lib Dem-Conservative Coalition. It is therefore one of the book’s strengths that not only is it written in a lively style which gives some freshness to the now familiar sequence of events but it also adds many new insights.

Although only briefly mentioned by Laws himself, perhaps the most important is how much the Liberal Democrats owe to Chris Huhne. In April, just before the second TV debate, I wrote,

It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on

…

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Tagged chris huhne, david laws, featured, gordon brown, nick clegg, paddy ashdown and peter mandelson | 15 Comments

A lesson from history in tackling terrorism

By Mark Pack | Thu 25th November 2010 - 8:54 am

Antonia Fraser’s lively and authoritative history The Gunpowder Plot: Terror & Faith in 1605 not only provides an entertaining account of the events that have turned November 5th into an annual fireworks celebration but also throws a light on how to tackle terrorism. For the early seventeenth century world which spawned Guy Fawkes, Robert Catesby and an attempt to blow up Parliament was one in which there were widespread fears of plots and violence, motivated by differing religious views that led some (but not all) to see the future as inevitably bringing a violent confrontation for religious supremacy. Fears of terrorist conspiracy by an extremist minority in a religion that nominally owned obedience to an overseas religious figure all sounds rather contemporary.

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Also posted in News | Tagged antonia fraser | 6 Comments

David Laws: 22 Days in May

By Helen Duffett | Mon 15th November 2010 - 4:18 pm

David Laws’ account of the negotiations that led to the Coalition agreement is due out next Monday.

According to the publishers:

The Liberal Democrats’ and Conservatives’ decision to form a Coalition government has changed the face of British politics. This book sets out the inside story of how this momentous event unfolded, and how – together – the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have started to address the challenge of a massive government budget deficit.

22 Days in May is the first detailed Liberal Democrat insider account of the negotiations which led to the formation of the Lib Dem/Conservative coalition government in May 2010,

…

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Tagged coalition agreement and david laws | 17 Comments

The British General Election of 2010: a book worth reading

By Mark Pack | Thu 11th November 2010 - 8:55 am

There are two simple tests I have for books that recount events I was in some way involved in: do they accurately retell events that I have direct first-hand knowledge of and do they tell me something new about events I was one step removed from? If a book pasts both those tests, chances are the rest of the book is interesting and well-informed too – and The British General Election of 2010 by Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley passes both tests with near flying colours (the description of Guildford as a “top” Liberal Democrat target betraying an over-attention to swings to win list over actual party priorities whilst the quote from Disraeli about coalitions is actually rather misleading).

In large part that is because their account is based on hundreds of off the record interviews carried out during the last Parliament and in the immediate aftermath of the general election. Because the interviews have been carried out across political parties (and across factions within them), the authors present a much more robust picture of events than is the fate of some journalists who source their off the record information much more narrowly.

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Also posted in General Election | Tagged dennis kavanagh, gordon brown and philip cowley | 2 Comments

How to defeat Al Qaeda

By Mark Pack | Wed 10th November 2010 - 8:55 am

The cover of Bruce Riedel’s The Search for Al Qaeda shows a group of armed men working their way up a hillside overlooking a beautiful valley that stretches away to rolling hills. It captures the wonder and the tragedy of Afghanistan in one frame.

The book itself is similarly crisp, packing a wide-ranging history of Al Qaeda and its key figures into only 150 pages of moderate size print. It is penned by an ex-CIA man of thirty years service who was frequently closely involved with the figures and events painted in the book, but not so closely as to make the reader fear it is more a justification of his career than a fair account of events.

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Also posted in Op-eds | Tagged afghanistan, al-qaeda, bruce riedel, featured, osama bin laden, pakistan, robert pape, saudi arabia and tony blair | 3 Comments

How the legacy of hereditary political power still shapes our political systems

By Mark Pack | Fri 5th November 2010 - 8:55 am

The Australian Parliament building in Canberra is a gem of democratic political architecture. Australia’s capital city was facing the need to expand and replace its existing Parliament building. But where to put the new one? The old one had deliberately been placed at the foot of the hill in Canberra, so that politicians would not be looking down on the public. Now the only suitable free space left was on top of that hill. The solution was clever: chop the top off the hill, build the new Parliament and then stick the top of the hill back on top of …

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Also posted in Op-eds and Parliament | Tagged 1832 great reform act, featured and philip manow | Leave a comment

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