New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, John Luther Adams
Understanding the dialectic that is at work
A valuable tool for comprehending which way the momentum is swinging the pendulum of British politics – and why, writes GAVIN O’TOOLE
NO USE FOR CONSENSUS: Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng
Banksy’s identity may have been published – but was the investigation in the public interest, asks PETER BENGTSEN
RON JACOBS recommends a book that charts the disparate circumstances that defined the lives of two prominent black Afro-Americans — one a communist, the other an anti-communist
CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile
SYLVIA HIKINS welcomes a survey of successful contemporary worker co-operatives and economy-based co-operative systems
DAVID NICHOLSON recommends the staging of this Wagnerian classic minus one or two insignificant quibbles
The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares
by Phil Tinline
Hurst, £20
CONCEALED within the pages of The Death of Consensus is a revelation that invites the reader to think about British political history not in terms of events, but processes.
While the author insists from the outset that “none of this is to suggest that history is somehow circular,” that is precisely what his analysis of the “nightmares” upon which a dominant consensus is constructed implies.
The historical logic Phil Tinline unpicks certainly feels Hegelian and, by making the continuities and ruptures explicit, each period he examines becomes a product of contradictions inherent or implicit in the preceding stage. He has discerned a dialectic.
Similar stories
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes, and recommends a a candid, evidence-based record of Britain’s role in the slaughter visited by Israel upon the Palestinians
MARTIN HALL welcomes a study of Britain’s relationship with the EU that sheds light on the way euroscepticism moved from the margins to the centre
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the difficulties surrounding freedom of expression
There is no doubt that Trump’s regime is a right-wing one, but the clash between the state apparatus and the national and local government is a good example of what any future left-wing formation will face here in Britain, writes NICK WRIGHT