The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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Rethinking Labour’s Past: nationalist-flavoured phrasemongering
David Miliband
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SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
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DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
Rethinking Labour’s Past
Ed. Nathan Yeowell
IB Tauris (2022) £17.99
“Firm principles and policies are open to objections
And the streamlined party image is the way to win elections.”
The editor and most contributors to this collection of essays appear to have taken the words of Leon Rosselson’s 1960s satire on the Labour Party as sound advice. The writers are drawn from a small group of institutions, who generally hail Starmer’s election as a reprieve and an opportunity.
Its success, we are told, will depend on “craft(ing) a new narrative capable of defining a new future for country and party alike.”
They come to bury Corbynite “historical narratives” such as Ken Loach’s Spirit of ’45 or the 1983 Labour manifesto. They seek to revive “narratives” and “insights” of Wilson, Kinnock and “the early Blair.”
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