A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 'At a time when democracy feels threatened, Simon Kuper is fighting hard for a better vision of politics - he is brutally honest about our problems but never loses hope that we can build a better democracy' Rory Stewart 'An intelligible, compelling and enraging narrative ... how the Good Chaps get away with it' New Statesman The 'Good Chaps' theory holds that those who rise to power in the UK can be trusted to follow the rules and do the right thing. They're good chaps, after all. Yet Britain appears to have been taken over by bad chaps, and politics is awash with financial scandals, donors who have practically bought shares in political parties, and a shameless contempt for the rules. Simon Kuper, author of the Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller Chums, exposes how corruption took control of public life, and asks: how can we get politicians to behave like good chaps again?

At a time when democracy feels threatened, Simon Kuper is fighting hard for a better vision of politics - he is brutally honest about our problems but never loses hope that we can build a better democracy -- Rory Stewart, co-host of The Rest is Politics
Exposes the corruption permeating UK politics and the death of the so-called "good chap" -- 'Best summer books of 2024' * Financial Times *
An intelligible, compelling and enraging narrative ... how the Good Chaps get away with it -- Will Dunn * New Statesman *
Perfectly timed as a guide to what the new government should do, Simon Kuper's follow-up to the superb Chums is a snappy, incisive account of the debasement of British politics by money and influence. -- Matthew D'Ancona * New European *
Simon Kuper has written a timely and compelling reminder to leaders of all political parties that, while living standards matter most to voters, Britain desperately need to improve and restore standards in public life too -- Tom Baldwin, author * Keir Starmer: The Biography *
A document of our time * Sunday Times *
Praise for Chums: 'Brilliant ... traces Brexit back to the debating chambers of the Oxford Union in the 1980s -- James O'Brien
An extraordinary book ... I got angrier and angrier and angrier as I read it -- Alastair Campbell
A searing onslaught on the smirking Oxford insinuation that politics is all just a game. It isn't. It matters -- Matthew Parris
A sparkling firework of a book -- Lynn Barber * Spectator *
Exquisite and depressing in equal measure -- Matthew Syed * Sunday Times *
This is the best detailed but lucid account I have read of how corruption surged in the UK -- Patrick Cockburn * i Paper *
The book to read on corruption in the UK -- Patrick Cockburn * i Paper *

Simon Kuper is an author and Financial Times journalist, born in Uganda and raised around the world. An Oxford graduate, he later attended Harvard as a Kennedy Scholar. He has written for the Observer, The Times and Guardian, and is also the author of Chums, Impossible City and The Happy Traitor.