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.