How They Broke Britain: The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller Paperback – 25 April 2024

James O'Brien writes beautifully about the way that a collection of people did significant damage to the UK infrastructure. The arguments he provides are clear, seemingly fact based and compassion led. I really enjoyed this book.

I enjoyed this book with some chapters jaw dropping and absolute page turners. A few chapters can be hard going but probably due to the authors fantastic and in depth description and use of vocabulary. Definitely a book that keeps your full attention to really appreciate the work and detail involved. You can’t get almost hear James O’Brian’s voice reading it to you.Very insightful but a warning - it will make you cross at times!

How They Broke BritainDashing for the train I espied James O’Brien’s book with its arresting title, How They Broke Britain. Who were ‘They’ I thought, what did they break, and why? What – partisan media, diminution of public services: sewage, court trial delays, et al. – hardly controversial. Why, I guessed correctly – as anyone might – when I bought this dramatic account of alleged misdeeds by the high and mighty, actual or self-appointed.“This book, then,”, states O’Brien, “is a charge sheet: a compendium of poor behaviour and bad actors”. “We will see that what has happened to the UK over the last few decades – notably since 2010, especially since 2016 and quite spectacularly since 2019 – is as unforgivable as it is immense.” [p.2]Those responsible for the damage, claims O’Brien, include MPs Nigel Farage, David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Jeremy Corbyn. Pride of place, or at least first in line, goes to one not an MP, nor even a UK citizen, Rupert Murdoch. He is accused of being the one who made the press even more a tool of narrow political interests, instead of the vital task of holding power to account.Omitted as a chapter – although often referred to in several as a culprit – is the MP whose meddling in Education turned the difficult occupation of teaching into an impossible job, so school teachers report. Other alleged miscreants, considered worthy of a chapter, include such media figures as Paul Dacre and Andrew Neil, as well as influencers such as Dominic Cummings.Answering his own question as to why a version of Fox News had not intruded into UK, O’Brien claims that “the lucrative business of taking the commoditisation of hate, the othering of minorities, the demonisation of racial or religious difference and the denigration of dissent to a whole new level had already been almost completely sown up. By Paul Dacre and Viscounts Rothermere’s Daily Mail.” [p.80].David Cameron and George Osborne are jointly charged in How They Broke Britain with introducing a prolonged austerity regime: arguably unnecessarily extended, or perhaps entirely unnecessary, given its dubious justification, notably “that the economic collalapse of 2008 was somehow caused by public spending in the UK.” [p87]. Also, O’Brien reminds us, “The grossly fallacious idea that the 2008 economic meltdown was due to Labour’s public sector spending, as opposed to a banking crisis born largely from the American subprime mortgage scandal, was absolutely crucial to Cameron and, even more so, his chancellor George Osborne.” [p.238].Why 4 stars? Because a fascinating read, I thought, but unlike technical books whose value I can assess for clarity and correctness, I simply don’t have the authority to make an objective claim. Nonetheless, a careful read is de rigeur for a meaningful critique. I did spot one error – O’Brien’s claim about Swedish crime. James O’Brien’s How They Broke Britain will not appeal to those addicted to ‘my party, right or wrong’, and anyway the whole arena is perhaps too emotionally charged for wide appeal to be claimed. As John L. Austin once wrote, it may be best ‘to let sleeping dogmatists lie’.

James O'Brien's latest book - following tomes on how to be right and not be wrong - is arguably his most polemical yet. Chapter by chapter, he dissects the roles that media moguls, politicians and newspaper editors have played in generating a generation's worth of failure, incompetence and downright illegality as this country has lurched from crisis to crisis, with seemingly no sign it will ever stop. Research here is key, and O'Brien's scalpel precision in both recording and retelling so many of the key stages between Rupert Murdoch's rise as a press baron to the laughably brief tenure of Liz Truss as Prime Minister. In between is made up of a frankly unbelivable-unless-it-was-true catalogue of cronyism, ill-preparedness, political gain at the expense of public wellbeing and criminal negligence. While I don't personally keep with every facet of each individual given their chapterial shame sheet, theres never the less ample fuel to stoke my personal ire. Standouts are inevitably the eviscerations of Nigel Farage, David Cameron, Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson - key architects and beneficiaries of the Brexit referendum in 2016 which provides this book with its raison d'etre. O'Brien's skilful ability to plot piece by piece how a campaign of fear-mongering, racism, divergance and sheer bloody lies enabled these crooks and swindlers to point the blame at anyone other than themselves and somehow rise their own greasy poles in the meantime. It's telling that even the data obsessed and clearly non-parliamentarian Dominic Cummings is damned by O'Brien with faint praise for often being the smartest guy in a room filled with incompetence and promotion above and beyond any actual achievement. Privilege, entitlement and a willingness for self-service above the public need are the recurrent themes that emerge, and O'Brien's book is as important a testament to How they broke Britain as the Nuremberg trials were in accounting the events of World War II. Essential reading for anyone who still thinks it's all the fault of immigrants, the badly off, the disabled and the most needy of society, who have all been betrayed by the actions of nine white men and one white woman.