Liam Byrne Audiobooks

Why Populists Are Winning: a former Treasury minister on how democracies lose

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Who is Liam Byrne?

Leaving the Treasury after the 2010 general election, Liam Byrne left a note for his successor reading I’m afraid there is no money. It was meant as a private joke in a long parliamentary tradition. It followed him for the next decade, and he has apologised for it more than once.

Born in 1970, Byrne has been the Labour Member of Parliament for Birmingham Hodge Hill, now Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North, since a by-election in 2004. He served in the Home Office under Tony Blair as Minister for Police and Counter-terrorism and then for Borders and Immigration, entered Gordon Brown’s Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and finished that government as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In opposition he held a run of shadow briefs, stood for Mayor of the West Midlands in 2021, and now chairs the Commons Business and Trade Select Committee.

He writes as a practitioner rather than an academic, with the particular interest of someone who has watched a political centre lose its grip from the inside.

Liam Byrne in audiobooks

Why Populists Are Winning is subtitled And How to Beat Them, and the second half is the point. Byrne draws on original research across Europe and America to set out what he calls the keys to populist appeal, then argues for a rebuilt radical centre rather than a defensive crouch. It is short by the standards of political books and deliberately practical: a field manual rather than a lament.

He reads it himself, which suits the material. There is no actorly polish, but there is the cadence of a man who has made this argument in committee rooms and knows where the objections will come from. At a little over five hours it fits comfortably into a couple of commutes.

You will find it below, along with anything else of his that reaches our shelves.