Start Again is a life-raft for all those who find themselves politically adrift and a rallying cry for a better kind of politics

Britain is today divided old against young, class against class, region against region, nativist against cosmopolitan, rich against poor and London against the rest. Our country is divided by generation, by education, by place and by attitude.

Politics needs to be turned off and started again.

In this time of tumult, when Britain is wrestling with the question of what sort of nation it wishes to be, its politics is stuck.

Power is hoarded by a distant and unresponsive centre and our two largest political parties have both been captured by those on their outer edges.

Too many of us have been left politically homeless.

In Start Again, Philip Collins, Times journalist and until recently a lifelong Labour voter, offers a road map to a different political destination. It is a road map that, in recent days, has been taken up by many from both sides of the political divide.

Drawing on lessons from history Collins proposes new answers to today’s most urgent questions: questions of education, work, health, housing, security, nationhood, and of how we can achieve a better future.

Hopeful, indignant and inspirational, this is a book for anyone who feels that politics no longer speaks to them.