Owen Jones' new book, This Land: The Story of a Movement, is an overview of the events of the last decade in the left political landscape with a particular focus on the Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. I joined the Labour Party in 2015, part of the huge amount of members who joined after being inspired by Jeremy Corbyn and his vision, and as of 2020, I have since left. My decision to leave was due to several factors all of which I won't detail here. I was generally quite well versed in the events Jones covers in this book and it is definitely a good overview of the major events that took place over the last few years. His analysis of things like Momentum's social media campaign was excellent and provided worthwhile insight into their successes and how that played into overall the successes in the 2017 General Election. He interviews and talks to several key people which is interesting and focuses on a kind of behind the scenes' depiction of events.
Unfortunately, I felt that his analysis was not consistent. He was pushing a particular angle; that John McDonnell would have done a better job; and that coloured the whole book, "it is a tragedy for the left that John McDonnell, long the Labour left's natural figurehead, never assumed the leadership". While everything that went wrong for 'the Corbyn project' was directly Corbyn's fault, everything that went right was attributed to somebody else. The book feels like a long-form justification for Owen Jones' own flip-flopping in regards to his support of the Labour leader. Jones couldn't remove himself from the narrative. While I understand that he was present for a lot of the things he discusses and disclosing that involvement is important, it felt more like he was trying to portray himself as a Cassandra type. It's useful having insight from those in the room when it happened but at times it felt more like he was trying to brag about how important he is rather than providing any real insight.
Regarding critical analysis, Jones provided a rather inconsistent narrative. For example, he would discuss the various studies that demonstrated that media coverage of Corbyn was overwhelmingly misrepresentative and negative but then wouldn't use this to create any sort of analysis of what impact this may have had. He talks to people who complain that "'He refused to play the game, he refused to do media trainings. He just felt it'd be selling out, that he wanted to be himself."' but in another section, he discusses Corbyn's "affable, zen-like demeanour on television. [Which allowed] Viewers [to] see the contrast between his media image- dangerous terrorist-loving extremist- and a reality which seemed poles apart". By having this in different parts, the overall cohesion comes across as inconsistent and incoherent. Which is he? Is he a zen-like figure who can win people over by being himself or is it a bad thing that he wouldn't 'play the game'? This happens with many things. One minute Jones is discussing how Corbyn couldn't commit to anything out of worry of upsetting people then he's being resolutely dogmatic about his principles. He discusses how Corbyn's policies inspired people and then claims "nobody in the office seemed to understand what policy was for". As an analysis, it didn't make sense and seemed like a series of different newspaper articles copied and pasted together. This could have been fixed if he responded to his sources. He presents them all unchallenged, meaning he doesn't question what they say when they contradict each other which if he had would have vastly improved the book.
Considering the subtitle of the book, The Story of a Movement, it is much more focused on the parliamentary Labour party and the Labour Party establishment rather than the members. He, of course, mentions the huge numbers of people who joined the party and Corbyn's incredible mandates in both leadership elections, but his interviewees are generally those working in Labour HQ or members of the press. In a topic such as this, the people outside of HQ need to be considered as well, rather than as an afterthought or as a statistic to prove a point.
I wanted to like this book and as an overview of the events, it is a good starting point. It just wasn't as good as some of his other works.