She was resistant to talking about the influence of her father on her political career. Though she credits him with developing her sense of injustice, she insisted her mother had played a bigger part. The daughter of the Liberal MP Frank Byers, who later became a life peer, Luise Byers was a social worker who retrained and ended up in the current affairs department of Granada Television, working on shows such as World In Action. Lisa Nandy is such an impressive, articulate and clear politician to listen to, but this book is weighed down with convoluted sentences, repetition and no clear progression or structure. She repeats so many times near the end of the book, that life is complex, politics is complex, and we need to accept that, yet we look to our politicians to wade through the complexity and come up with genius, simple solutions to dilemmas. I asked Nandy how she felt about the rehabilitation of New Labour; Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer are both unembarrassed to praise Tony Blair. “I’ve always hated cults,” she said, “so I disliked the cult around Blair just as much as I disliked the cult around Corbyn. I think it’s unhelpful for us as a party. One man doesn’t change things: movements do. So I feel very uncomfortable with the resurrection of the cults. I also think that those debates are very little to do with Blair the person and Corbyn the person – they’re much more about the Seventies fighting the Nineties, to see which vision of the past will win the day.”

All In: How We Build a Country That Works (Audio Download

Wrote at university that “The LGB (lesbian, gay, bisexual) society for example doesn’t accept straight members, but we still have to pay for it, something many find unacceptable” (she now insists she “will always support” LGBTQ+ comrades).

A source inside Labour joked that such short stints in Westminster are often viewed as lazy. “What people say about Lisa is they’re not sure what she actually wants to do,” he added. “She is very brilliant but a bit of a loner. Very talented and driven by ideas, but is she going to play ball with Keir? She needs to demonstrate that she has relationships around the shadow cabinet table. Would I want to do karaoke with her? Absolutely. What would she be like if she was your boss? There is a question mark over her.” Levelling up was killed off a long time ago,” she added; it was only ever an attempt to keep Red Wall voters within the Conservatives’ electoral coalition. “There was never an enthusiasm for it within the Conservative Party as a whole. It was an agenda that was driven by Johnson and, to some extent, Gove, because they knew it was the key to holding that coalition, and nothing deeper. When the levelling up white paper came out [in February], it looked as if Gove might win the battle with the Treasury. But No 10 came down comprehensively on the Treasury’s side and that was the end.” Rishi Sunak did not want to stump up the cash. Nandy told me there is a solidarity among working people that did not exist in the Eighties and Nineties. “This is the ‘dignity and respect’ agenda that took the SPD to power in Germany. It’s the sentiment that Anthony Albanese was expressing during his successful campaign in Australia, and it’s what the Biden team put at the heart of their pitch to rust-belt America: there is a ceiling on the amount of division that people can tolerate, and we’re not going to pit people against one another in a race to the bottom.” Maybe (probably!) I'm just irredeemably wonkish, but I just think that the electorate will spot the hole in "we need to be honest about what we can afford, instead of talking about halving or scrapping tuition fees" *five minutes later* "of course, I will scrap tuition fees". This to Nandy is evidence of why devolution is needed – but her ideal vision of GM is still far away.

Alternative: Towards a New Progressive Politics The Alternative: Towards a New Progressive Politics

These local vignettes capture a wider sense of civic and economic powerlessness in much of the the UK, one that, Nandy argues, a generation of politicians either ignored or failed to understand. Brewing in English towns for 40 years, it drove the “red wall” Brexit vote. Globalisation – and, in particular, the role of the Chinese economy as a source of cheap labour – saw 6m British manufacturing jobs disappear. The power of unions diminished accordingly and was further undermined by successive Thatcher governments. New Labour mitigated the economic impact of deindustrialisation, but its strategy for growth focused overwhelmingly on cities. Towns such as Wigan, ageing and neglected, were ripe for revolt and the 2016 referendum was the opportunity they needed.On occasion the book is revealing. Politics sometimes “has the unreal feeling of a charade about it”, Nandy writes. “This is why, when the rush to attend Prime Minister’s Questions begins on a Wednesday morning, almost without exception, I’m found heading in the other direction.” Most interesting was Nandy pointing out how, typically, our western discourse focuses on the 1980s when the US and the UK shifted to the right which signalled the end of the Post-War Consensus and the beginning of the current capitalist system. However, throughout the book, Nandy also includes the opening up of the Chinese economy at this time as a factor which has shaped recent decades. This inclusion helps us understand these changes in a more global context and is welcome. This number sees a sharp rise when you look at the members of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority – which is made up of leaders of each GM council.

All In by Lisa Nandy review – why Labour must give power to

The shadow minister made it a point to say that both are great leaders, with differing personalities and ways of leading politics. Loved this. I wasn't really aware of Lisa Nandy or any of her political projects, so reading this felt like starting from scratch and discovering a side of the UK I had very little idea existed. Despite being a Labour MP (and serving during the Corbynite/Blairite split), Nandy clearly makes an effort to avoid stark positions and easy solutions. She focuses on the middleground, not just between political parties but also looking at getting the right balance between local, community-based efforts, national government and international collaboration. In this brilliant and accessible intervention, Lisa Nandy reveals how Britain can leave behind the mess in which we find ourselves. All In charts a course towards a fairer, more equal, more prosperous country by drawing on the greatest asset we have – each other.Orange mushrooms appear and multiply as “ghosts” to taunt her at moments of emotional epiphany, from the horror she feels when she forgets how to play long-practised piano pieces to the pain she experiences on discovering her husband’s darkest secrets. Yu uses magic realism to infuse mystical elements into an otherwise ordinary Beijing city setting, and her symbolism is perplexing in places. Despite this, Ghost Music has beautiful prose and claustrophobic imagery that intensely evokes its protagonist’s alienation. Lisa is a serving Shadow Secretary of State, so I did not expect the book to announce new Labour policies - and it's always a risk that a position articulated in All In is mistaken for Labour policy, so I it should be expected that Lisa would err on the side of caution in their work. That may be why I think the solutions Lisa sets out fall short. They are all well-trodden paths: handing power to communities and so forth. That doesn't mean that Lisa is wrong, but I would have liked her to be bolder in her solutions - and I think looking further afield outside of the UK may have added value to this.