Protest and Power: The Battle for the Labour Party
DAVID KOGAN
(Bloomsbury reader, 448 PP, £20)
Tablet bookshop price £18 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Of all the many “what ifs” of recent political history – what if there had been no Winter of Discontent? What if Margaret Thatcher had not been successful in the Falklands War? – there is one that may well shape the next 25 years. What might have happened had Jeremy Corbyn not scraped in with the requisite 35 ­nominations from MPs (most of whom never voted for him) to stand for the Labour leadership in 2015? Corbyn was a most unlikely candidate – marginal and unknown during his 40 years on the backbenches, and a token and seemingly hopeless candidate for the hard Left who was in fact reluctant to stand.