Five Year Mission: The Labour Party under Ed Miliband

Tim Bale gives us a detailed, insightful and at times riveting account of Ed Milibands failed attempt to revive Labours electoral fortunes following the 2010 electoral defeat and the demise of New Labour. (LSE blog)

a comprehensive study... Bale's account contains important lessons for Labour's future; this book is required reading for policymakers and politicos alike. (Chartist)

the book will remain a useful first-stop to this period in Labour's history. New Statesman blog: The Staggers, Stephen Bush

an absorbing, narrative account of Miliband's ascent (Stephen Tall blog)

excellent book (Palatinate)

incisive and authoritative (Guardian live blog, Andrew Sparrow)

detailed account of Miliband's five-year leadership (Independent)

In this detailed account of Miliband's five-year leadership Tim Bale...charts the strategic calculations, the compromises and the endless triangulation between boldness and caution that have resulted in the electorate still having no clear idea of what the Labour party stands for or whom it is appealing to...Bale's month-by-month reminder of every speech, promise, gaffe, clarification and forgotten mini-crisis of the past five years graphically illustrates the depressing pettiness, obsessive poll-watching and point-scoring that is the stuff of modern politics. (John Campbell, The Indepedent)

incisive and authoritative (Andrew Sparrow, Guardian politics blog)

Tim Bale's book, Five Year Mission, paints a subtler picture of him than the hostile media image, of someone who has skilfully kept his party together while demonstrating the kind of flexible toughness that is needed in modern politics. (Independent on Sunday)

In May 2010, Labour suffered one of its worst ever election defeats. A few months later it chose Ed Miliband as its new leader. His task? To win back power after just one term in opposition - a tall order given how many voters had come to blame Labour for the economic mess the country was in, and to see the party as a soft-touch when it came to immigration and welfare.

Even those who were more sympathetic had their doubts. Was Ed Miliband really leadership material? Would he be able to overcome defeating his elder brother to get to the top? Would he have to do as he was told by the trade union leaders who had helped him win? Could he resolve the tensions between Blairites and Brownites, Blue Labour and New Labour? Might his desire to keep his colleagues united mean Labour stayed stuck in its comfort zone? Would he, in seeking to break from the party's recent past, take it too far to the left? Could he offer the electorate something really radical in 2015 or would he instead choose something safer but ultimately less inspiring? And what should twenty-first social democracy look like now that the money had run out?

This book, by one of the country's foremost experts on party politics, seeks to answer all those questions and, in the run up to the 2015 general election, to ask one more: will Ed Miliband's five year mission turn out to be 'mission impossible'?