An absorbing study of five Labour radicals – Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Ken Livingstone, plus Benn himself – makes a convincing case for their cultural victories but romanticises Corbyn’s years as the party’s leader
This might seem like an eccentric book. As Labour prepares for power after four consecutive general election defeats, Andy Beckett is interested not in what is to come but what has just been. He is particularly preoccupied by the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, what happened to him as party leader and what his leadership represented. The Searchers is mostly fair-minded, diligently reported and researched, but leaves you in no doubt that Beckett, a Guardian columnist, is a sympathetic Corbynite.
In the long, final section, covering 2015 to the present day, Beckett writes nostalgically about the excitement of the early years of Corbyn’s leadership when the left, for so long ridiculed, traduced and marginalised (Peter Mandelson joked during the era of New Labour dominance that they had been contained in a “sealed tomb”), seized control of the party and unlocked a spirit of radical countercultural optimism, especially among younger voters.
