Losing in a landslide is bewildering for those at the heart of a political campaign. Everything is possible, until the hammer blow of the exit poll falls. Then, with relentless predictability, members of the party that has lost first blame the voters, and then start to blame each other. James Schneider was a co-founder of Momentum, the political movement formed off the back of Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, and was later the party’s head of strategic communications.
In his new book, he takes a different approach. Opening boldly and promisingly, his first words are “defeatism plagues the British left”, and his introduction sketches his ambition: “To keep the possibilities open and turn winning from a distant hope into a reality, we must use the coming years to build power, weaken our opponents, and prepare ourselves for the next surge.”
