Now We Have Your Attention

Jack Shenker sets out to explain British politics from the point of view of ordinary people, travelling from a Manchester warehouse and a pub in Essex to the edge of Glasgow and a racecourse in Durham. In places worn down by austerity and long economic decline, and among a generation held back by insecure work and unaffordable housing, he locates the roots of the chaos at Westminster. Shenker joins a McStrike protest on a Cambridge roundabout and a London Renters' Union meeting after Grenfell, and meets hard-right bloggers in Newcastle and climate protesters in Brighton. With unusual access to campaign groups and to Momentum, he describes disillusionment turning into local, personal political engagement.

Noam Chomsky endorsed it, saying he could not stop reading once he started and calling it a remarkable and very revealing piece of work.