Friday, October 08, 2010

Two New Books on the Formation of the Coalition


On November 15th, Biteback will be publishing two new books analysing the formation of the Coalition in May. 22 DAYS IN MAY is written by David Laws, who was a leading member of the LibDem coalition negotiating team and spent an all too short time as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. It's a real insider's account of what happened and gives some astonishingly frank account of the events and conversations leading to the formation of the Coalition, along with an essential desription of the early days of the government.

David Laws was one of the key Lib Dem MPs who negotiated the coalition deal, and the book includes his in-depth, behind the scenes, account of the talks with the Conservative and Labour teams after the General Election, as well as the debates within his own party about how the Lib Dems should respond to the challenges and threats of a hung parliament.

Rob Wilson's book FIVE DAYS TO POWER is a very different book. It gives the first full account of the tri-party negotiations that led to the political earthquake of a Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government. With unique access to the participants from all three parties involved in the drama, Rob Wilson, Conservative MP for Reading East, looks at the key relationships, the arguments and the secret meetings, and reveals how and when the key decisions were made by the parties. He paints the first full picture of the coalition talks. This is a book that provides a compelling insight, and substantial new information and material into a ruthless competition for power that developed over five days in May.
Preorder David Laws' book HERE.
Preorder Rob Wilson's book HERE.

6 comments:

Lit said...

Hi Iain,

Any chance you'll be making these books available as Ebooks through Amazon's Kindle system? Ever since I picked up a Kindle I've preferred to buy books on the platform.

Iain Dale said...

@Yes, these two books will be available as e-books - our first ones! We intend to make all our books available as ebooks from now on

Lit said...

Fantastic, I'll keep a look out for the electronic versions appearing.

Michael Fowke said...

Iain, mate, we don't want to read books about the Coalition. It's bad enough just living through it.

Man in a Shed said...

Out of interest which eBook formats are you considering publishing in ?

Unknown said...

Why hasn't Laws been arrested and charged with fraud yet? Just as bad as Morley et al.