Richard Toye

2024 marks the centenary of the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. What legacy of the past have they left behind?

Professor Richard Toye explores Labour's exercise of power as a continuum, setting Attlee's administration in long-term historical context between the first Labour Government of 1924 and the current party under Keir Starmer.

Within this context he shows why the Attlee administration matters so much and how successive Labour governments have fashioned it in their own image. Into this story are woven the foundation of the Labour Party in 1900, the First World War, the General Strike of 1926, the Spanish Civil War and the coalition war-time government under Churchill.

Age of Hope is an incisive, informative look at a political party that has been fundamental in shaping modern Britain and will be equally instrumental in its future.