“I won’t knife you in the back. I’ll knife you in the front.” — Jess Phillips MP
When a mild-mannered socialist is thrust to the head of the Labour Party, it kick-starts a war with a UK establishment desperate to protect itself. They really fucking hate him.
This is the inside story of the most punk event ever in UK political history and the people that made it happen. How a rank outsider was swept to within a hair’s breadth of Downing Street by a wave of revolutionary ideas, memes and fermenting discontent.
Starting with Jeremy Corbyn’s improbable Labour Party leadership campaign in 2015 and culminating in the unprecedented events of the 2024 general election. This rollercoaster story takes us through the highs and lows of a movement intent on creating a more equal society. First, as it fights for power, then for its life, as it is mutinously sabotaged from within, trounced in the press, rejected by the electorate, yet somehow succeeded in reshaping the landscape of British politics forever.
A Very British Sabotage argues a single idea: that democratic legitimacy belongs to those willing to question whether they’ve earned it, and is forfeited by those entitled few who never stopped to ask.
A Very British Sabotage is based on two books. Alex Nunns’, The Candidate, and Paul Holden’s The Fraud. Alongside new interviews with the key figures from the time; AVBS will reveal untold details of the history of the Labour Party in its most radical and acrimonious incarnation.