This book posits that the hard left plans to end democracy in Britain. Describing the aftermath of the 2015 Labour leadership election, Bower writes:
‘Commentators criticised Corbyn's ‘poverty of ambition’ for failing to win the political centre, but they misunderstood. As unwilling as ever to compromise, he planned to defeat the PLP, transform Labour into a genuinely Marxist party, and win sufficient electoral votes to become prime minister. Just the one victory would be enough. Thereafter, McDonnell boasted, their changes would be ‘irreversible’. [ … ] Just as Corbyn and McDonnell intended to revise the Labour Party's rules to permanently protect their coup from any challenge by social democrats, they would change the British constitution to cement their victory. The result of the second general election would be a foregone conclusion.’
This may seem like a paranoid conspiracy theory but by telling Jeremy Corbyn's life story Tom Bower tries to show that it isn't as paranoid as it sounds.
The book is a tabloid hatchet job, its nature given away by the large typeface. Throughout the book Bower regularly assumes the reader holds a number of conservative attitudes thereby potentially alienating readers who don't, probably the very ones he is most trying to convince, in whose minds those of the book's criticisms that are genuinely valid may be devalued. For example:
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