MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
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
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
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.
More from this author
Just as German Social Democrats joined the Nazis in singing Deutschland Uber Alles, ANDREW MURRAY observes how Starmer tries to out-Farage Farage with anti-migrant policies — but evidence shows Reform voters come from Tories, not Labour, making this ploy morally bankrupt and politically pointless
