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fankle's review against another edition
5.0
Excellent. I think I should stop reading a daily paper and read a massive book like this every few months instead.
garethtrussell's review against another edition
5.0
All Out War is an utterly gripping, supremely well-researched account of the tumultuous Brexit campaign and it's immediate fallout in British Politics. It is the essence of 2016.
bnhwalker's review against another edition
5.0
This, along with Project Fear, goes down as one of my favourite journalistic political books of all time. Its attempt to cover a recent British event I was proud to have been a part of from both sides makes it very fair and worthy of... some award or something.
sifter's review against another edition
5.0
Stellar stuff on the year of chaos that was 2016 and the Brexit referendum. The sources, particularly on the Tory side, are exceptional and allow for a forensic telling of the campaign from all angles: political, personal, policy, moral, press... feels like history being written in real time.
jamescridland's review against another edition
5.0
A long - possibly overly so - book looking at the Brexit campaigns. Interesting, and also depressing how many people were taking part in campaigns they didn't really care about. The appendix contains one argument from Boris about how bad Europe in, and one about how good Europe is. Sigh...
martha_is_reading's review against another edition
5.0
"At 6am exactly, David Dimbleby announced that Vote Leave had secured more than half the votes cast. 'Quite an extraordinary moment'. he said. Britain had voted for Brexit. David Cameron had bet the farm - and he had lost the lot."
When I picked up this reservation from the library, I was quite dismayed to find that it was SO MASSIVE. It is a hefty tome that took me about a month to read (slowed by the fact that it was too impractically huge to take on my commute). However, I'm glad I ploughed through, it was absolutely worth it. This is a very well-written account of how the political elite tore each other apart in the name of Brexit. It's something akin to Whitehall meets EastEnders, it's both riveting and revolting to read about the backstabbing, scheming and general hideous arrogance of these people.
"I remember thinking, number one: we're totally dominated by Tory internal party management here. This whole campaign is run by Conservative concerns, which has got to be a bad thing. But number two: they're already planning victory! The PM had basically decided he'd won, and I think that attitude bred a complacency which ultimately was a bit disastrous."
If you're a Remainer, you will find this to be a frustrating read. While I had previously blamed Leave voters for this nightmare of a result (and they certainly have their part to play...but more on that later), this book brought home the sheer number of mistakes the Remain campaign made. We almost definitely could have won it, were it not for this catalogue of errors! Starting with the naivety of David Cameron in offering a referendum to appease a party of Eurosceptics and then being surprised when his party peers didn't choose loyalty to him over their own views. Really?! How did he not see that coming?! It also made me loathe Boris even more. While I have no love for Michael Gove, at least he was always a Eurosceptic, with his father having lost his fishing business after the Common Fisheries Policy, so his choice wasn't as surprising. Boris just dithered back and forth and ultimately made the choice that was going to get him the most air time and the best shot at PM. Eugh. EUGH.
Labour don't get off lightly either, Corbyn's refusal to state a position (and the way in which he avoided even having the conversation with senior shadow cabinet ministers) is astounding. Tories might have screwed us by being too focused on keeping their party together afterwards (never mind keeping the bloody country together); but Labour was just a chaotic mess chasing its own tail.
It was just a f***ing shambles, and they all let the country down as far as I'm concerned. More importantly it showed how incredibly out of touch they are with the electorate, a problem which continues into May's government if the latest election is anything to go by. It was amazing to find just how much Cameron and Osborne underestimated the depth of anti-immigration sentiment, to the point where they thought people could be won over with an economic argument - when few people have any economic understanding at all (or any will to want to understand it).
"The stage was set for a showdown between the two stunts, neither of which had any meaningful basis in political reality - a budget that the man announcing it did not intend to give if he won the referendum and would not be around to present if he lost, versus a fabricated manifesto by a cross-party group that by definition would never form a government."
What I also found frustrating was being constantly reminded about how easily the British people have been played. The '£350 million for the NHS message' has now been exposed for the absolute trash that it always was, but it bothers me that so few people looked at that message and thought critically about it. Even if one can believe such a grandiose claim, look at the people making it! These were people who could never, ever, have delivered on it - and who would never be held accountable for exactly that reason. So many people are crying out that they've been lied to, but it's hard to have sympathy when it was such a transparent lie.
Because this book looks at each side in such detail, it exposes the referendum for what it really was: the creation of a very small group of people intent on manipulating the British public. That's what political campaigns are - campaigns!! Fully funded and staffed with people whose job it is to present messages to certain people at certain times in order to maximise their success. This might sound obvious but I think that was easily forgotten. One can argue that during an election campaign, that's how it should work - ultimately each party is trying to sell themselves and their brand to as many people as possible to get the largest share of the vote - but this was not an election.
This is why giving us the choice was such a catastrophic error. So few people truly understood the choice we were being asked to make, we needed educating; instead, as with any political campaign, what we received was manipulation. What makes me angry is that so few people questioned the messages that we were being fed.
In summary, a fascinating read for anyone who wants to understand more about the inner workings of Whitehall and how it led to Britain voting Leave. Excluding those who are put off by 688-page political hardbacks. Don't say I didn't warn you.
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