All In: The must-read manifesto for the future of Britain

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I was hoping for a clear argument: this is how things are, this is why, and this is what needs doing. We were given lots of current issues, and many, interesting historical quotations and underpinning reasons, but the solution seems to be in the hands of the people … citizens assemblies … without much more detail. On the road in Wigan, the shadow minister talks levelling up, the Tory leadership – and how Labour can define a new political era

Book Review: All In by Lisa Nandy - Young Fabians Book Review: All In by Lisa Nandy - Young Fabians

Outside the fish and chip shop, Nandy was approached by TalkTV, which had come to Wigan to respond to the Mail’s hatchet job. “I think they stitched you up,” a slightly sweaty presenter told her. “I’m from South Shields – you should see the high street there. Or Corby, where my missus is from.” Nandy never intended to become a politician. She wanted to study English literature at university, but her sister – a superior academic, she said – got a place to study English at Oxford. “And I thought, that is not a comparison I’m going to win.” Instead, she studied politics at Newcastle. Her years at university were, bar none, the best of her life, she said.The 43-year-old will be coming to Neston to discuss her book, All In: How We Build a Country That Works, which was released in November 2021. Her vision shows how by empowering communities, a better society will build itself. This includes a focus on the climate crisis and how the transition to greener power offers an opportunity to rebuild communities. For example, she mentions how in Grimsby wind power is bringing in high paid, skilled jobs which is sparking a revival for a town which voted heavily to Leave in the EU Referendum.

Lisa Nandy | Events | Manchester Literature Festival Lisa Nandy | Events | Manchester Literature Festival

Their relationship cooled through the Corbyn years – “We were on different sides of the question about the leadership, and Brexit” – before warming during the leadership contest. Nandy revealed a slight superiority about Starmer’s late arrival to politics: “Many of us grew up in the Labour tradition – I was delivering party leaflets when I was seven. He’s not steeped in career politics. He’s come in a lot more recently, and he’s very challenging of why people hold the views they do. I think that has helped us – it’s one thing to feel the public mood, but another to turn that into a strategy. When we are together as a team, you can see how the strength of the people he has put around him makes him much more concrete.”

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I go quite shy when my picture is taken,” she admitted. “When I started out, someone told me, you’ve got a really fun personality and it’s not coming through in your clothes. But I thought people wouldn’t listen. There’s a whole generation of women I’ve come up alongside, Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips, who have made it OK for you to express more of your personality through your clothes.” Barbara, a local matriarch and Sunshine worker, was complaining about a hotel up the road in Standish that in 2021 received 200 refugees overnight. There were Britain First protests outside it, said Nandy. Wigan was 95 per cent white at the last census in 2011; there are now two mosques in the borough. Under the Home Office’s dispersal scheme, which subcontracts accommodation arrangements to Serco, more migrants are arriving in Wigan, but the local council is often kept out of the loop. The Standish refugees were rehoused in local flats where, according to Barbara, they made a lot of noise. Whenever the conversation veered towards complaint, Nandy broadened it with a joke or an inclusive gesture; she pointed out that one of the refugees now volunteers at Sunshine House. The case was another illustration of how the north could run itself better, she said, if only it were allowed to. After the fall of Kabul, the rehousing of Afghan refugees went much more smoothly when the Greater Manchester Combined Authority stepped in – working across its ten councils to sort housing, healthcare, schooling and employment support. Lisa Nandy criticised this reality, saying: “I do not want to see power move from men in Whitehall to men in the town hall.” I’ve been here before, Tom. I live in Wigan! You’re supposed to be helping with my PR – you’ve f***ed up with that one!” While Lisa Nandy was co-chair of the Owen Smith campaign in 2016 to beat Corbyn she met with Blair. Most members would find that deeply discouraging. https://t.co/sZhfKMRt2p

All In by Lisa Nandy | Waterstones

When we spoke a few days after Johnson’s fall, Nandy said that levelling up should be an effort on the scale of Labour’s rebuilding of Britain after the Second World War. “It’s a moment like the post-1945 moment, where there was a recognition that rights and opportunities hadn’t kept pace with the expectations of the population. National reconstruction, national renewal, whatever you want to call it. New Labour would probably have called it ‘A Fresh Start for Britain’.” She also argued that the “public are moving away from us” on a number of issues. But in reality, Corbyn’s principles and proposals helped to push Labour membership over 500,000 – the biggest number since the 1970s. The party’s 2017 election campaign, meanwhile, was largely successful despite massive establishment opposition, with Labour increasing its vote share more than under any other leader since 1945. 2) Smears and Palestine In this brilliant and accessible intervention, Lisa Nandy reveals how Britain can leave behind the mess in which we find ourselves. All In charts a course towards a fairer, more equal, more prosperous country by drawing on the greatest asset we have – each other. A Tannoy sounded. “Would Lisa Nandy please leave the building,” Flower told her. “Go and give someone else a hard time.”These local vignettes capture a wider sense of civic and economic powerlessness in much of the the UK, one that, Nandy argues, a generation of politicians either ignored or failed to understand. Brewing in English towns for 40 years, it drove the “red wall” Brexit vote. Globalisation – and, in particular, the role of the Chinese economy as a source of cheap labour – saw 6m British manufacturing jobs disappear. The power of unions diminished accordingly and was further undermined by successive Thatcher governments. New Labour mitigated the economic impact of deindustrialisation, but its strategy for growth focused overwhelmingly on cities. Towns such as Wigan, ageing and neglected, were ripe for revolt and the 2016 referendum was the opportunity they needed. The shadow minister made it a point to say that both are great leaders, with differing personalities and ways of leading politics.