Two-thirds of the way through this timely book, Lisa Nandy relays a gem of a quote from Clement Attlee, Labour prime minister in the 1945-51 postwar government. “Socialists,” Attlee wrote, “are not concerned solely with material things. They do not think of human beings as a herd to be fed and watered… They think of them as individuals cooperating together to make a fine collective life.”
All In: How We Build a Country That Works is an attempt to revive that ethos for 21st-century Britain, making the case for a democratic revolution to address a seemingly endless political crisis. Amid signs that a top-down managerialist approach is back in fashion in Downing Street, after Johnsonian chaos and the wild follies of Trussonomics, it feels like a much-needed intervention.
