'A Very British Coup' by Chris Mullin

This was republished a few years ago with the tagline 'the novel that foretold the rise of Corbyn': it accurately predicted the horror and outrage that many in the political class felt against a genuinely leftwing Labour leader.

The sections dealing with ruthless smear campaigns in the press are especially prescient; indeed, the fictional scenario is arguably calmer than reality, if you think back to how ridiculously hyperbolic the actual coverage of Corbyn often was, which drowned out legitimate and good faith criticisms of his leadership.

As the novel progresses, the specifics of the story become more far-fetched, especially those that lead to the government's inevitable downfall, even if the atmosphere remains believable. The weak characterisation also makes the novel rather shallow: the rightwing characters are all scheming villains in sharp contrast to the righteous leftwingers.

A couple of chapters cover strike action by a union of power workers during winter; this reads very much like the author working over his frustration at the Winter of Discontent (1979). The strike organising union boss is characterised as an establishment figure working with the CIA to bring down Labour.

The most outrageously paranoid and farfetched sentence states that the unions hadn't gone on strike during 10 years of Tory rule (the novel was published in 1982, the story starts in 1989), but as soon as a leftwing Labour government came to power, they were up for striking again to bring down the government.

This is silly enough with the context that the 1974 miner's strike had led to the Conservatives losing power. With the later context of the miner's strike during the Thatcher years, it becomes ridiculous.

A good novel but not a great one. I listened to the audio version - the narrator clearly had an absolute blast doing all the voices, which added a lot to the experience of the story.