 First edition | |
| Author | Tom Bower |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Jeremy Corbyn |
| Genre | Biography |
| Publisher | William Collins |
Publication date | 2019 |
Dangerous Hero: Corbyn's Ruthless Plot for Power is a 2019 biography of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn written by British conservative writer, investigative journalist and biographer Tom Bower. It is an unfriendly portrait of Corbyn. [1] [2]
Peter Oborne of Middle East Eye wrote the "new book on Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, contains numerous falsehoods. It systematically omits relevant facts" and that "Again and again he [the author] withholds relevant information". [3] Stephen Bush of The Guardian criticised the book as a "hatchet job, it is a dismal failure" and said it committed "rudimentary errors". [4] A Labour Party spokesman stated it was "poorly researched and tawdry hatchet job... packed with obvious falsehoods and laughable claims." [5] The Times called it "a bit of a bore". [6] Matthew Norman of The Independent stated, "The only 'dirt' investigative journalist Tom Bower managed to dig up was the Labour leader's domestic amnesia and proneness to debt through helping those in need" and that the book "appears to contain a fatal paradox: on the one hand, as hinted by the subtitle Corbyn's Ruthless Plot for Power, [Corbyn] has plotted ruthlessly for power; on the other, the author reports that Corbyn was on the brink of retiring to Wiltshire to keep bees". [7] VICE News stated that the book is "garbage" and full of factual errors. [8]
| ||
|---|---|---|
Backbencher
Leader of the Opposition and Labour Party
Elections
Cultural depictions
 | ||
According to journalist Gaby Hinsliff, who described the book as flawed, there is little that was new in the book because "We all know by now about the meetings with Holocaust deniers and perpetrators of blood libel, the somersaults turned to avoid blaming the Kremlin for the Salisbury poisonings, the long history of antipathy to the EU." [9] The most "telling criticism," in Hinsliff's view, was that "Corbyn is simply not very bright... His backbench career was long on expressing passionate solidarity with causes but short on concrete achievements, and he comes across as prone to ducking arguments that he lacks the skill to win." She argued that the book's greatest flaw is Bower's eagerness to condemn its subject, but concludes that Dangerous Hero, "is the most compelling in-depth study so far of a man whose head is unusually difficult to get inside, given his suspicion of anyone who isn’t a fellow traveller." [9] Ex-Labour MP Tom Harris wrote that the book is a "meticulous and highly readable account", that "stands as an indictment of both the Labour Party and a political system that allows an individual such as Jeremy Corbyn to come within shouting distance of the levers of power in the UK". [2] A reviewer for The Times wrote that according to the book, the October 1968 Rodney riots in Kingston, Jamaica convinced Corbyn to become a Trotskyist with the goal of turning Britain into a communist state. [10]
In June 2020, it was announced that Associated Newspapers, the publishers of The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, paid substantial damages and costs over a "grotesque" libel made against a non-profit Palestinian refugee group in its serialisation of the book. Lawyers for the plaintiff, the Palestinian Return Centre, said: "Neither Mr Bower, the Mail nor HarperCollins (the publisher of the book) saw fit to properly verify the true position, nor to put the allegation to the PRC prior to publication." The news outlets have also published a correction and apology. HarperCollins and Bower had already withdrawn the allegation, explaining that the author had relied on a contemporaneous newspaper report of the incident that had not been amended or corrected. [11]
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn is a British politician who has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North since 1983. An independent, Corbyn was a member of the Labour Party from 1965 until his expulsion in 2024, and is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group parliamentary caucus. He served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. Corbyn identifies ideologically as a socialist on the political left.
Peter Alan Oborne is a British journalist and broadcaster. He is the former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, from which he resigned in early 2015. He is author of The Rise of Political Lying (2005), The Triumph of the Political Class (2007), and The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism (2021), and along with Frances Weaver of the 2011 pamphlet Guilty Men. He has also authored a number of books about cricket. He writes a political column for Declassified UK, Double Down News, openDemocracy, Middle East Eye and a diary column for the Byline Times.
Thomas Michael Bower is a British writer and former BBC journalist and television producer. He is known for his investigative journalism and for his unauthorised biographies, often of business tycoons and newspaper proprietors.
Andrew Philip Drummond-Murray, commonly known as Andrew Murray, is a British trade union and Labour Party official and activist. Murray was seconded from Unite the Union to Labour headquarters for the 2017 United Kingdom general election, subsequently becoming an adviser to Jeremy Corbyn from 2018 to 2020.
Rufus Hound is an English actor, comedian and presenter.
John Ware is a British journalist, author, and investigative reporter.
Rachel Annabelle Riley is a British television presenter. She co-presents the Channel 4 daytime puzzle show Countdown and its comedy spin-off 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. She is a mathematics graduate.
Lisa Eva Nandy is a British Labour Party politician serving as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport since 2024. She has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wigan since 2010. Nandy previously served as Shadow Foreign Secretary, Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, Shadow Energy Secretary and Shadow International Development Minister.
Jonathan Michael Graham Ashworth is a British former Labour and Co-op politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leicester South from 2011 to 2024. He had served as Shadow Paymaster General from September 2023. Having lost his seat at the 2024 general election, he was appointed chief executive of the Labour Together thinktank.
Alex Nunns is a British author, editor and political activist.
The Stop the War Coalition (StWC), informally known simply as Stop the War, is a British group that campaigns against the United Kingdom's involvement in military conflicts.
Richard Burgon is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds East since 2015. Burgon served as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor in the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn from 2016 to 2020. A Labour Party MP, on 23 July 2024 he had the whip withdrawn and was suspended from the party for six months as a result of voting for a Scottish National Party amendment to scrap the two child benefit cap. He now sits as an Independent MP until the whip is re-established, subject to a review.
Jessica Rose Phillips is a British politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Yardley since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, she has served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls since July 2024.
This article summarises the views and voting record of Jeremy Corbyn, who was the Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom from 12 September 2015 until 4 April 2020. An independent, Corbyn was a member of the Labour Party from 1965 until his expulsion in 2024.
Comrade Corbyn: A Very Unlikely Coup is a 2016 book by British journalist Rosa Prince, published by Biteback Publishing. It is an unauthorised biography of Jeremy Corbyn, who was the Leader of the Opposition in the United Kingdom from 2015 to 2020.
Richard Leonard is a British politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2017 to 2021. He has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP), as one of the additional members for the Central Scotland region, since 2016. He ideologically identifies as a socialist, democrat and internationalist.
Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) is a British non-governmental organisation established in August 2014 by members of the Anglo-Jewish community. It conducts litigation, runs awareness-raising campaigns, organises rallies and petitions, provides education on antisemitism and publishes research.
There have been instances of antisemitism within the Labour Party of the United Kingdom (UK) since its establishment. One such example is canards about "Jewish finance" during the Boer War. In the 2000s, controversies arose over comments made by Labour politicians regarding an alleged "Jewish lobby", a comparison by London Labour politician Ken Livingstone of a Jewish journalist to a concentration camp guard, and a 2005 Labour attack on Jewish Conservative Party politician Michael Howard.
Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is a British organisation formed in 2017 for Jewish members of the Labour Party. Its aims include a commitment "to strengthen the party in its opposition to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism ... to uphold the right of supporters of justice for Palestinians to engage in solidarity activities", and "to oppose attempts to widen the definition of antisemitism beyond its meaning of hostility towards, or discrimination against, Jews as Jews".
The Skwawkbox is a left-wing news site based in the United Kingdom, founded in 2012 by Steve Walker.
