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Britain Is Better Than This

Britain Is Better Than This

Why a Great Country Is Failing Us All

by Gavin Esler
Paperback
Publication Date: 03/01/2024

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An urgent and timely exploration of a British political system in peril – and what we must do to save it.

For centuries, British identity has been shaped by ideas of exceptionalism, grandeur and competence. Yet British democracy is failing. Governments supported by a minority of voters are elected with enormous majorities under a deeply unrepresentative first-past-the-post system. The result has been failed leaders delivering wounding blows to the country's economy, prosperity and international image.

Britain Is Better Than This explores what lies beneath this sense of malaise, revealing the structural and constitutional failures at the heart of a sclerotic political system. It sheds light on a culture of lies, distrust and corruption. It reveals fundamental flaws in core institutions, including the media, the House of Lords and the House of Commons. It draws on events such as the MP expenses scandal, Brexit, 'Partygate' and the farcical premiership of Liz Truss, as symptoms of a great nation at a turning point yet unsure of which way to turn. And it looks ahead, offering practical solutions to answer the key question of our time: What do we need to do to build a better future?

'The most compelling, lacerating description of the Muppet Show that is British public life I have yet read.' Will Hutton

'There can be no book more urgently needed than this one.' Steve Richards

ISBN:
9781804547724
9781804547724
Category:
Political science & theory
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
03-01-2024
Language:
English
Publisher:
Head of Zeus
Country of origin:
United Kingdom
Pages:
368
Dimensions (mm):
234.01x153.01mm
Gavin Esler

Gavin Esler is an author and award-winning broadcaster with the BBC. He is currently a presenter on the BBC’s flagship news and current affairs programme, Newsnight, and he is also familiar to audiences around the world on BBC World Television where he hosts Dateline London and numerous other programmes, including Hardtalk. Gavin won a Sony Gold Award for his Radio Four Programme Letters from Guantanamo, an investigation of the position of those held without trial in the so-called War on Terror. He has also won a coveted Royal Television Society Award for his reporting in the United States, and has recently completed a radio documentary series for BBC World Service and BBC Radio Four, The Clinton Years.

Gavin has interviewed numerous heads of state and government including President Clinton, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, King Abdullah of Jordan, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, former President Rafsanjani of Iran and Jacques Chirac of France. His other major BBC interviews for Arts programmes include guests as varied as Dolly Parton, Angelina Jolie and Penelope Cruz to Donald Sutherland, Stephen Frears, Seamus Heaney, Julian Barnes, V S Naipaul, Jane Fonda, Daniel Barenboim, Alaa al Aswany and Javier Marias. He is also a frequent contributor and columnist on newspapers and magazines, most notably The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, the Spectator, the New Statesman and The Scotsman.

For eight years Gavin Esler was the BBC’s Chief North America Correspondent based in Washington. Hr coordinated BBC coverage of the Iran-Contra hearings, and was accredited to cover the presidencies of George H W Bush and Bill Clinton as a White House correspondent. He commentated live for BBC television and radio on the inaugurations of Clinton and George W Bush, plus he anchored BBC Television coverage of the Monica Lewinsky / Clinton impeachment proceedings. He has also reported on international affairs from all over the world including the Brazilian rainforest, the Aleutian Islands, Russia, the Middle East and China. He is the author of The United States of Anger, an examination of the discontent within the United States directed towards the political system, plus a series of novels including A Scandalous Man (2008) and Powerplay (2009.)

Powerplay, published in Harper Collins paperback in May 2010, is set at the end of the Obama administration. It tells the story of the decline in the US-British “special relationship” as seen through the eyes of Alex Price, the British ambassador to Washington, at a time of crisis. The British, Scottish and American governments find themselves having a huge row over terrorism. To patch things up the British invite the new American vice president to come on a shooting trip to Scotland – where he disappears.

Gavin Esler is a fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law by the University of Kent at Canterbury.

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