At the launch of the final part of his magisterial Brexit quartet, author Tim Shipman offered three reasons why differing political groups should read it. The first were those still reeling from the Out result. The second were those who passionately wanted to get Out and blamed everyone else for not making the EU exit after the 2016 referendum work better to the UK’s advantage. The third were the oft-ignored Liberal Democrats, “because there’s a whole chapter about them”.
On his telling — at a length akin to Boccaccio’s Decameron, an account of life under a 14th-century plague — Out covers the period from the advent of Boris Johnson as leader in 2019 to the demise of the Tory government in July 2024, a period encapsulated in the subtitle, “How Brexit got done and the Tories got undone”.
