Chris Mullin

Corbyn for PM? | 3 June 2017

‘The news that Harry Perkins was to become prime minister went down very badly in the Athenaeum.’ Thus begins my novel A Very British Coup, written 35 years ago and, with the narrowing gap in the opinion polls, suddenly topical again. Since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader it has been reprinted twice and, earlier this year, an e-book promotion sold 2,500 copies in a single day.

The hero of my novel, Harry Perkins, is a former Sheffield steel worker who was brought to life in a subsequent TV adaptation by that wonderful actor Ray McAnally. The platform on which he was elected was more radical than Corbyn’s, although some of it still rings bells: withdrawal from the Common Market (been there, doing that); public control of finance (we have New Labour, circa 2008, to thank for that one). Other commitments included abolition of the House of Lords, the honours list and the public schools. There was even a paragraph about dismantling newspaper monopolies.


Nick Cohen and Katy Balls on what sort of PM Corbyn would make:

Perkins’s manifesto also promised an end to Britain’s ‘so-called’ nuclear deterrent and the withdrawal of all foreign military bases from British soil. This, remember, was at a time when the Americans were busy introducing Cruise missiles into their British bases in the teeth of huge protest. It was also the time when the possibility of a Labour government led by Tony Benn was scaring the wits out of middle England. What’s more, one must pinch oneself to recall, in the early years of the Thatcher decade, Labour was ahead in the polls. And love him or loathe him, no one ever doubted Benn’s capacity to govern.

The novel was published in 1982. At the time I was working for the socialist weekly Tribune.

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