CHRIS SEARLE welcomes a new book that makes working class history come alive in a true story of human flesh and aspiration
Dr Who and the Tory party
ANDREW MURRAY muses on the Tory Party’s capacity to reincarnate itself despite all rumours of its decline, and doubts the conclusions of a rare analysis from the left
Conservative party leadership contender Boris Johnson with supporters during a Tory leadership hustings at Darlington Hippodrome
GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a contemporary update of a problem play that raises more questions than it answers
New releases from Alice Di Micele, Tim Grimm, and Tereza Catarov
MARY CONWAY is frustrated by the stylistic muddle that arises when you apply a pub theatre sensibility to a towering Greek tragedy
ALAN McGUIRE welcomes a biography of the French semiologist and philosopher
ALEX HALL is frustrated by a book that ducks a clear definition of terrorism and fails to perceive the role of the state in sponsoring it
The Party’s Over
Phil Burton-Cartledge, Verso, £11.99
THIS is an updated version of a rarity on the left, a book that takes the Tory Party seriously as a political actor.
Socialists endlessly pore over the entrails of the Labour Party, yet the Conservatives are routinely dismissed in the most sweeping terms as simply the pliable governing instrument of the class enemy.
The Tories deserve more scrutiny of the sort this book attempts. After all, it is not only the concentrated expression of the British bourgeoisie, it also from time to time gets more working-class votes at elections than the Labour Party.
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