The New Left: Michael Chessum on This is Only the Beginning

All Book Fringe events are FREE in person + online | no tickets required (but you can reserve them here to get a book/reminder of the event)

As part of Book Fringe 2023, we are delighted to welcome influential journalist and activist Michael Chessum to discuss his new book This is Only the Beginning: The Making of a New Left, from Anti-Austerity to the Fall of Corbyn.

The book charts the wave of left-wing movements that gained momentum in the 2010s as a response to decreased standards of living, rising debt and climate meltdown, a clear rejection of neoliberal consensus. From hopeful radicals to mainstream politics and the fall of Corbyn, we’ll hear from Michael about why it all went wrong for the left and what it needs to do now.

Michael is joining Lighthouse as part of this year’s Book Fringe: ALT Edition in partnership with two other Edinburgh indie bookshops – Argonaut and Typewronger

Read more about Book Fringe here

Our Speaker

Michael Chessum is a journalist and activist. He has written for the Guardian and Observer, the New Statesman, The Independent, Vice, Novara, The London Review of Books and many others. He co-founded the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, playing a prominent role in the student protests of 2010 and the anti-austerity movement that followed. In 2016-17, he was a member of Momentum's first Steering Committee, serving as its Treasurer, worked as a press officer and speechwriter on Jeremy Corbyn's second leadership campaign. As National Organiser for the left wing anti-Brexit group Another Europe is Possible, he became a dissident within Corbynism and a prominent voice in the public debate on Brexit and migrants' rights.