‘Now We Have Your Attention: The New Politics of the People’
A major new book exploring Britain's political pandemonium from a radically different angle - published by The Bodley Head and Vintage Books
- Originally released September 2019
- Paperback published September 2020
“One of the most important and compelling books I've ever read, by one of Britain's most gifted writers”
"We live in an age of crisis: a world where chaos has become commonplace, and the fabric of our politics appears to be coming apart at the seams. In Britain, when the crisis is analysed for us on television and in the papers, it is usually images of Westminster that we are shown, and it is primarily politicians’ voices that we hear. This book tells a different story. It travels not to the great citadels of power, but to the margins instead – places that lie off the edge of the page, shady corners into which news cameras rarely reach. It argues that it is the people dwelling in these spaces who can best explain why the present feels so unstable. It believes that if we want to find the future – or at least understand the struggles that will forge it – then we must look here."
'Now We Have Your Attention: The New Politics Of The People' is an alternative map of the UK's ongoing political tumult. From Essex to Newcastle and Kensington to Manchester, from a dank club night in Brighton to a shabby shop-front in Glasgow, almost four hundred miles north, it journeys deep into the lived experiences of individuals and communities right across the country to uncover the ways in which the old politics is falling apart, and the spaces in which rival futures are being fought for. With exceptional access to some of the UK’s most exciting and dynamic new political movements, it reveals how the collapse of a paradigm that has structured our world for forty years fuelling political engagement of a completely different sort: local, personal, effective and utterly fearless.
Originally published in September 2019 by The Bodley Head and Vintage Books, 'Now We Have Your Attention' is available to order now in hardback, paperback, e-book and audiobook from Amazon, Waterstones, The Hive, or your local independent bookshop.
The UK paperback edition, featuring an updated prologue by the author, was published in September 2020.
The Portuguese translation of the book, produced by Bertrand Editora - one of Europe's oldest publishing houses - was released in July 2020 and is available here.
For reviews, events and extracts, see below.
Critical praise for 'Now We Have Your Attention'
"One of the most important and compelling books I've ever read, by one of Britain's most gifted writers. If you want to understand why we are in this crisis, listen to the voices all too often airbrushed from the political conversation" (Owen Jones)
"For Jack Shenker, understanding the Brexit vote and the transformation of party politics means looking for answers where others have failed to tread... The author’s passion – and the defiance of his subjects – is infectious. You have to applaud him for finding the untold stories behind the rolling omnishambles that is British politics in 2019." (Dan Hancox, The Observer)
"Jack Shenker’s diligently reported and elegantly written book not only describes how the calamity of Britain today was long in the making... Ignoring the clamorous dirges of mainstream journalism, it outlines a future about which one can reasonably feel hope" (Pankaj Mishra)
"An exploration of a nation in distress, touching on many of the key fractures that have opened in British society [and] the energy and vision of activists seeking to build something different... skilfully compiled through the first-hand stories of the protagonists [and] told with great sensitivity and empathy... [George Packer’s] The Unwinding is the closest comparison. Shenker is an excellent guide and an elegant writer... If our political elites had shown some of his curiosity towards everyday struggles across Britain, and some of his compassion towards the strugglers, we wouldn’t have reached this pass in the first place" (William Davies, The Guardian)
"Shenker contrasts a sclerotic political class with what is organically emerging — a 'fierce and liberatory engagement with the way that power, money and privilege mould our lives'... It is a compelling argument [and] also a significant democratic intervention: to contrast a bankrupt politics with a 'tired, wired and hopeful' generation alive and politically liberated" (Jon Cruddas, Prospect)
"With scrupulous probing and sensitive interpretation, this penetrating inquiry lays bare the malaise of deindustrialization and austerity in Britain... The picture that unfolds is shocking, but also inspiring, with rays of hope that a better future may be within reach" (Noam Chomsky)
"Now We Have Your Attention is especially useful in that it makes clear that there is a genuine groundswell of people looking for a radical political alternative… Shenker differs from many of his journalistic peers in his healthy scepticism towards the Westminster hothouse, and in his eagerness to get out of it" (Tom Blackburn, New Socialist)
"A beautifully written piece of cultural analysis … does an excellent job of providing deep historical context … Shenker has a powerful ability to tell stories that are resonant and arresting" (Joan C. Williams, Times Literary Supplement)
"Its central feature is its attentiveness – to people and to places often overlooked. In a work that chronicles inspiring acts of resistance, the care that defines Shenker’s prose feels like its own quiet act of solidarity… The new politics of the people, as the book’s subtitle puts it, may not yet have any definite form: it is emergent rather than dominant, contested, vulnerable. But it is the best hope we’ve got. And in Jack Shenker’s book, it has a document equal to its ambitions and to its fortitude" (Tim Schneider, Red Pepper)
"A guidebook to the stark realities of the precariat, hollowed-out communities and the debt-ridden generation... A book to both make sense of, and change, the world" (Mark Perryman, Morning Star)
- 'BOOK OF THE MONTH': THE GUARDIAN (SEPTEMBER 2019)
- 'BOOK OF THE YEAR': POLITICS, THEORY, OTHER (2019)
- SELECTED AS ONE OF PHILOSOPHY FOOTBALL'S 'TEN BOOKS TO SHAKE 2020'
Book events
2019
Edinburgh Books Festival, Edinburgh - 'Implosion of the Old Politics': Jack Shenker in conversation with Ece Temelkuran and Heather Parry
Saturday 24th August, 12.30pm. More details here
RSA, London - 'Inside the New Politics': Jack Shenker in conversation with Adanna Shallowe
Thursday 12th September, 1pm. More details here
University of Cambridge - 'Children of the interregnum: political imagination in Egypt, Britain and beyond'
Thursday 17th October, 5pm. More details here
National Liberal Club, London - 'The New Politics of the People - with Jack Shenker'
Monday 28th October, 7pm. More details here
Left Book Club Hackney, London - 'Now We Have Your Attention'
Wednesday 6th November, 7pm. More details here
Partisan Collective, Manchester - 'Now We Have Your Attention with Jack Shenker'
Thursday 7th November, 5.30pm. More details here
Stroud Literary Festival, Stroud - 'Does Democracy Have A Future? With Jack Shenker, Molly Scott-Cato and David Runciman'
Saturday 9th November, 8.30pm. More details here
LSE Department of Government, London - 'The New Politics of the People, with Jack Shenker and Dr Florian Foos'
Thursday 14th November, 6.30pm. More details here
Tower Hamlets Writeidea Festival, London
Saturday 16th November, 5.30pm. More details here
The People's Republic of Stokes Croft, Bristol
Thursday 21 November, 6.30pm. More details here
Topping, Bath - Jack Shenker on 'Now We Have Your Attention: The New Politics of the People'
Tuesday 26th November, 8pm. More details here
The Royal Irish Academy, Dublin - 'The TASC Annual Lecture / Rethinking Politics: Power and Resistance from Below'
Thursday 5th December, 6.30pm. More details here
2020
Conway Hall, London - 'Resistance': Jack Shenker gives the 2020 Stuart Hall Foundation lecture as part of an afternoon of debate and performance
Saturday 8th February, 1pm. More details here
The London Library, London - 'Power and the People': Jack Shenker in conversation with Urmee Khan and Alev Scott
Wednesday 12th February, 6.45pm. More details here
Prospect Book Club, London - 'Now We Have Your Attention, with Jack Shenker'
Monday 17th February, 6.30pm. More details here
Bristol Transformed, Bristol
Saturday 7th March, 4.30pm. More info here
The World Transformed Festival, Online - 'From crash to COVID: the evolution of the left from 2008 to now, with Jack Shenker and Maya Goodfellow'
Thursday 10th September, 12.30pm. More info here
The University of Newcastle Insights Lectures, Online - ‘Now We Have Your Attention’: pandemics, protest, and politics from below
Thursday 19th November, 5.30pm. More info here
Extracts and articles - An exclusive extract from the third chapter of the book, exploring how labour resistance is adapting to our changing economy, was published as the cover story for the Guardian's Review supplement in September 2019 and can be read here. Jack's Guardian opinion piece, laying out some of the key arguments of the book and the need for us to rethink what politics means, is online here, and an op-ed for The Big Issue on a similar subject is available here.
Talks and interviews - Jack's talk at the RSA entitled 'Inside the New Politics' is now available in full online here, and a short introduction can be seen here. Jack's in-depth interview about the book with James Butler of Novara Media can be heard here.
