Political Facts

By intelligence officials for intelligent people

This timely book examines the role of fact-checking journalism within political policy debates, and its potential contribution to public engagement. Understanding facts not to operate in a political vacuum, the book argues for a wide remit for fact-checking journalism beyond empirically-checkable facts, to include the causal relationships and predictions that form part of wider political arguments and are central to electoral pledges. Whilst these statements cannot be proven or disproven, fact-checking can, and sometimes does, ask pertinent critical questions about the premises of those claims and arguments. The analysis centres on the three dedicated national British fact-checkers during the UK’s 2017 snap general election, including their activity and engagement on Twitter. The book also makes a close political discourse and argumentation analysis of three key issue debates in flagship reporting from Channel 4 News and the BBC.

This book is the most comprehensive single volume reference work available for British political facts. Covering the period from 1900 to the present, it is the latest edition in a series previously edited by David Butler and various collaborators. This new edition updates the contents to the immediate post-European Union referendum period in the UK. It is useful to a wide range of potential readers, including students, educators, journalists, policy professionals, and anyone with an interest in politics and political history. It will be valuable to academics working in a variety of disciplines, including history and political science.

The 10th edition of a library classic, British Political Facts records the who, the what and when of British political life from 1900 to the present day. Thoroughly researched and updated, this reliable and unique work is a treasure trove of information for scholars and politicos alike.

British Political Facts Since 1979 is the definitive record of the who, the what and the when of British political history from the election of Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister to the present day. It is a comprehensive reference work that will be invaluable to students of Contemporary British Politics.

Timothy Garton Ash is well known as an astute and penetrating observer of a dazzling array of subjects, not least through his many contributions to the New York Review of Books. This collection of his essays from the last decade reveals his knack for ferreting out exceptional insights into a troubled world, often on the basis of firsthand experience. Whether he is writing about how “liberalism” has become a dirty word in American political discourse, the problems of Muslim assimilation in Europe, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, Günter Grass’s membership in the Waffen-SS, or the angry youth of Iran, Garton Ash combines a gimlet eye for detail with deep knowledge of the history of his chosen subjects. Running through this book is the author’s insistence that, whatever some postmodernists might claim, there are indeed facts—and we have both a political and a moral duty to establish them. By practicing what it preaches, Facts Are Subversive shows why Timothy Garton Ash is one of the world’s leading political writers. “The best and most perceptive political writer of our time . . . This book shines the clearest of lights on an entire decade.”—John Simpson “One of the most reliable and acute observers of the past present, able to report on events as a witness and, simultaneously, assess them with a coolness of judgment that almost always holds up over time.”—George Packer, New York Times Book Review “One of the most enjoyable political books you’ll read this year.”—GQ