British Labour Leaders

Comprehensively updated new edition of the essential guide to the qualities and vulnerabilities of political leaders.

As the party that championed trade union rights, the creation of the NHS and the establishment of a national minimum wage, Labour has played an undoubtedly crucial role in the shaping of contemporary British society. And yet the leaders who have stood at its helm from Keir Hardie to Sir Keir Starmer, via Clement Attlee, Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbyn have steered the party vessel with enormously varying degrees of success.

With the widening of the franchise, revolutionary changes to social values and the growing ubiquity of the media, the requirements, techniques and goals of Labour leadership since the party's turn-of-the-twentieth-century inception have been forced to evolve almost beyond recognition and not all its leaders have managed to keep up.

This comprehensive and enlightening book considers the attributes and achievements of each leader in the context of their respective time and diplomatic landscape, offering a compelling analytical framework by which they may be judged, detailed personal biographies from some of the country's foremost political critics, and exclusive interviews with former leaders themselves.

An indispensable contribution to the study of party leadership, British Labour Leaders is the essential guide to understanding British political history and governance through the prism of those who created it.

Essential reading for followers and students of the history of Labour politics.

'Anyone interested in the dynamics of political leadership, and how it is exercised in a party that was created to challenge the very notion of deference, should read this important and absorbing book.' Alan Johnson

'High-class biography and timely analysis reveal the essence of a successful and flawed Labour Party leader.' Patrick Wintour