THIS book from Dagenham and Rainham MP Jon Cruddas offers a fascinating analysis of where the Labour Party has been going wrong in distancing itself from working people and their lives by not seeing work as the engine for change but as something increasingly peripheral and irrelevant.

Written during the pandemic, Cruddas detects a reawakening in the recognition of the value of work — nurses, doctors, care workers, supermarket staff and bus drivers have suddenly been seen as those doing the vital front-line work of society.

Cruddas chronicles the approaches of different post-war governments, while always remaining rooted in his own experience of Dagenham and Barking. For the author, the rise and fall of Fords in Dagenham finds its mirror in the postwar Labour governments and their policies.