While his chapters have seemingly vague titles such as Community, Work, Homes, Borders and Youth, these broad overlapping themes emerge in Shenker’s detailed and passionate reporting. Debi, a campaigner working with homeless young people in Manchester, tells him that there has been a “tearing of the social fabric” that has “left many of these kids with a kind of PTSD”.He talks to Fatima, 54, who lives out of two suitcases in Stratford, east London, having migrated from her native Guinea-Bissau to Portugal, then to the UK; she works two minimum-wage cleaning jobs, from 6.30am till 9pm, before returning to the grim, precarious bedsit she shares with nine strangers.... Yet we are left hopeful. The author’s passion – and the defiance of his subjects – is infectious. And you have to applaud him for finding the untold stories behind the rolling omnishambles that is British politics in 2019.
