Comrade Corbyn
Subtitle: A Very Unlikely Coup
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2016-01-26
Language: eng
Number of pages: 384
ISBN-13: 9781849549967
Description: Jeremy Corbyn is the most unlikely revolutionary: a middle-aged, middle-class former grammar schoolboy, who honed his radicalism on the mean streets of rural Shropshire. Until recently, he was barely known outside political circles, yet today he is the leader of the Labour Party having won by a landslide, riding a wave of popular enthusiasm. When he was first persuaded to run, not even Corbyn himself dreamed he would somehow tap into a summer 2015 zeitgeist, an unforeseen populist fervour for change. The thought of being leader was initially said to terrify him. So how did this very British iconoclast manage to snatch the leadership of a party he spent forty years rebelling against? Who is he and where did he come from? And what exactly happened over the space of an extraordinary summer to propel an old lefty called Jeremy to inspire and excite hundreds of thousands of people, and breathe new life into the socialist ideals he has, almost alone, held true to for so many years? From Corbyn's cosy rural upbringing, through three marriages - including his decision to divorce one wife for sending their son to grammar school - and his long espousal of contentions causes, including Irish republicanism and a free Palestine, Comrade Jeremy is the story of the most unexpected leadership contest ever to take place in modern British politics.