‘All In: How We Build A Country That Works’ Lisa Nandy (Harper North 2022) £16.99 reviewed by Larry O’Hara (published in Labour Briefing May 2023)
Having seen Shadow Cabinet member and Wigan MP Lisa Nandy give a passable speech a few years ago, part of me wanted to like this book, honestly!
Deploying a blizzard of statistics (and repeatedly using to the point of embarrassment irrelevant quotes from the Kennedy Family and Abraham Lincoln), Nandy outlines problems in today’s world. These include the “loss of skilled secure work” (p.12), due to “a system that serves profit before people” (p.43), meaning “an unequal society we live in, where lives can be weighed against profit in a balance sheet and come out worse” (p.97). She is of course referring to capitalism, but quotes Neil Kinnock’s favourite Marxist Eric Hobsbawm to the effect that a binary opposition between capitalism and socialism was an arbitrary and artificial construct (p.22). Lacking a coherent analysis, Nandy bemoans that “somewhere along the way, political economy has become detached from people and their central concerns…we serve the economy rather than it serving us” (p.123). She slates The City of London for laundering dirty money (p.46) and sucking growth out of the economy (p.140), and dislikes ‘outsourcing’ (i.e. privatisation) of services/utilities (p.76/134-5), even joining (pre-Starmer!) a picket line protesting about this at her local hospital (p.73). Nandy also (daringly in current circumstances) criticises Labour’s past adherence to trickle-down economics (p.126-7), and regrets workers’ rights were eroded in the 1980’s but never restored (p.183). A populist sub-text plays off towns against cities (p.54), though UK cities are way behind the European average (p.83) anyway. Appropriately, Nandy recognises the urgent problem of Climate Change (p.24-28) and the importance of China regarding this and their economic model (29-30/175/191). Globalisation she criticises (p.42) but also embraces, starting the book with an illustrative redemptive tale of Wigan Athletic FC’s rapacious owner’s replacement by a new one who exhibits “enthusiasm and an apparent commitment to the club” (p.11). How unfortunate that in May 2023 for the fifth time this season, player wages were not paid.
The key economic and strategic problem for the Starmer project is how to improve matters while not increasing taxes or public borrowing significantly or challenging capital. Nandy, while favouring rail nationalisation (p.135) does not resolve this quandary. Measures advocated like properly enforcing a Land Ownership Register and votes at 16 (p.166-8) are neither here nor there. Her distinctive contribution is a woolly substance-free pseudo-populism. She states “power lies with the people and must be returned” (p.154/see also 152)—yet that power has never thus far resided with ‘the people’. Saying “the solution to Britain’s problems is simple: Hand people power and resources and they will build a country that works…hand decisions to people who have a stake in the outcome, and things get better” (p.117/152) isn’t sufficient. This (and the ‘citizen assemblies’ panacea–p.111) do not directly confront power and wealth distribution in society, nor are they intended to. Yet ‘Financial autonomy’ for all Britain (p.136) and a ‘Community Right To Buy’ local resources (p.137) without redistribution and tackling both financial and industrial capital/the Bank of England/Treasury, are doomed from the outset. Her centrist rhetoric about taking on monopolies (p.197) and cleaning up the City as “a priority” (p.175) is misleading moonshine. For not only are John McDonnell’s radical ideas (and name) absent, as too the ‘Preston Model’, her footnote on these matters (FN 18/p.211) cites Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ 2018 pamphlet ‘The Everyday Economy’, which emphatically avoids such heresy. Jeremy Corbyn, though only named once (regarding buses: p.104), is also snidely attacked (p.49). Et Tu Lisa?
On the bright side, the book at times reads like an American household pet (probably the dog: cats are too clever) has accessed an AI writing programme with a faulty history component. Aside from numerous duplicated quotes (e.g. p.42/53, p.83/128), apparently, “we must be prepared to act with clarity and tenacity in pursuit of multiple, often conflicting goals. Upholding human rights, democratic freedoms and action on climate change are all non-negotiable. These are the important principles that Abraham Lincoln said ‘may and must be inflexible’” (p.31). Really?
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