Updated 2026 edition, including never-before-seen photos and new epilogue.In the summer of 1999, Michael Ashcroft (now Lord Ashcroft) became the subject of concerted attacks aimed at unseating him as Treasurer of the Conservative Party. His attackers were The Times newspaper and the New Labour Government of Tony Blair.The ultimate target was William Hague (now Lord Hague), whose leadership would be destabilised and the finances of his party undermined had h...

Sir Keir Starmer made the leap from Leader of the Opposition to Prime Minister in only four years, one of just a handful of politicians to have done so since 1945. Yet the landslide majority that Labour secured under him in July 2024 has been described as 'loveless' and his first months in Downing Street were overshadowed by rows and controversies, turning what should have been a political honeymoon into a period of sustained turbulence.In this fully revised and updated edition of ...

Nigel Farage is the great disruptor of British politics. Since co-founding UKIP in 1993, he has challenged the status quo in areas including the UK's membership of the European Union, mass immigration and net zero. He is the only person in the modern era to steer two different political parties to victory in successive national elections, topping the poll in the European elections in 2014 with UKIP and in 2019 with the Brexit Party. Now he is attempting to crown that achievement as the lea...

2019 saw the Labour Party meet its fourth consecutive general election defeat, and its worst since 1935. Arguing that it is vital for Labour to regroup if it is to offer a serious alternative government, Lord Ashcroft draws on extensive research among real voters – especially those who have moved away from Labour in former heartland seats now represented in Parliament by the Tories. Diagnosis of Defeat explores the reasons for this extraordinary result and offers a frank and uncompromising...

Since the dawn of aerial combat in the First World War, the heroism of the men who put their lives at risk in the air has known no bounds. There were no more heroic airmen than the fighter pilots and bomber crews of the Second World War - men who sacrificed their own lives in order to save their crew or who, although in extreme pain, managed to get their aircraft home rather than risk becoming PoWs. In telling the stories of more than eighty such men, Heroes of the Skies paints a ...

Three years ago, Rishi Sunak was an unknown junior minister in the Department of Local Government. By the age of thirty-nine, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, grappling with the gravest economic crisis in modern history. Michael Ashcroft's new book charts Sunak's ascent from his parents' Southampton pharmacy to Oxford University, the City of London, Silicon Valley – and the top of British politics. It is the tale of a super-bright and hard-grafting son of immigrant parents who marries a...

During the Conservative Party leadership contest in the summer of 2022, Kemi Badenoch made an immediate impression on the public as a politician with robust views and a strong personality. Although only a junior minister at the time, she was marked out as a rising star and, having exited the race after the fourth ballot, even as a potential future leader. From September 2022, she served in the Cabinets of Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, combining her post as the Secretary of State for Business ...

Donald Trump's election as President of the United States confounded the pundits and crowned a year of political surprises.In Hopes And Fears, Lord Ashcroft sets out in compelling detail why America sent Trump to the White House. With the rigorous research and analysis that is his hallmark, he argues that - contrary many people's assumptions - the American people made the choice with their eyes wide open.We hear from swing-state voters in their own words as they wr...

Joe Biden's victory in 2020 was a remarkable end to four tumultuous years. But beyond removing Donald Trump from the White House, what is the mandate that the new President's voters expect him to fulfil? Can he meet the expectations of the biggest electoral coalition in American history? How did Trump expand his support to win more votes than any previous Republican? And what are the chances of a new era of consensus and unity in America after years of division? Drawing on four years of gr...

The Falklands War, which may prove to be the last 'colonial' war that Britain ever fights, took place in 1982. Fought 8,000 miles from home soil, it cost the lives of 255 British military personnel, with many more wounded, some seriously.The war also witnessed many acts of outstanding courage by the UK Armed Forces after a strong Task Force was sent to regain the islands from the Argentine invaders. Soldiers, sailors and airmen risked, and in some cases gave, their lives for the fr...

Angela Rayner is one of the most arresting figures in British politics today. A self-declared socialist, she pursued an unorthodox route to Westminster, leaving school and giving birth to her first child aged sixteen having gained no formal qualifications. After becoming a care worker, she was a trade union representative before entering the House of Commons in 2015 as the Labour MP for Ashton-under-Lyne. She served as the shadow Secretary of State for Education for four years from 2016 an...

In April 2019 Lord Ashcroft published the results of his year-long investigation into South Africa's captive-bred lion industry. Over eleven pages of a single edition of the Mail on Sunday he showed why this sickening trade, which involves appalling cruelty to the 'King of the Savannah' from birth to death, has become a stain on the country.Unfair Game, to be published in June 2020, features the shocking results of a new inquiry Lord Ashcroft has conducted into South Africa's lion ...