A fusion of polemic, anecdote, and theory, Ash Sarkar’s Minority Rule — her first published book — is a journey through the perilous frontierland of identity politics. Originally used as a way of conceptualising the oppression of individuals by way of race, gender, and sexuality, the identitarian creed has since been removed from its anti-capitalist roots, Sarkar argues, and used to justify the persistence of inequality and split the working class. Armed with a bagful of heavy-duty receipts, Sarkar debunks and exposes the myths of ‘minority rule’ which consume such a disproportionate amount of our time and energy. As her book underlines, it is ultimately the ruling classes who fix the terms of engagement of the so-called culture war, and use it as a strategy for discouraging dissent.

Adopting a tone of acid rebuttal (of which Sarkar’s attackers on social media have often found themselves on the wrong end), Minority Rule gradually reveals itself to be a deep-dive into how our political discourse has been diluted of substance in the post-truth era. Sarkar examines how both the political elite and the mainstream media have capitalised on working-class anxiety over scarcity of resources and declining material conditions. Across the political spectrum, she suggests, subjects have been brainwashed into understanding class as more concerned with culture than capital. Instead of pursuing a common goal — dismantling the structures that sustain inequality — we have been conditioned into fearing the wrong kind of minority (i.e., the marginalised rather than the wealthy). If we are made to fight among ourselves, so the theory goes, they can get away with more.

Charting a course between the theoretical and the empirical, Minority Rule is filled with examples of this strategy in action. Sarkar demonstrates how faux concerns can give rise to manufactured moral panics, from fear of the apparently detrimental effect immigration has on the welfare state to anxieties about the trans community’s alleged threat to free speech. One of the book’s most illuminating references is to the right-wing journalist James Delingpole, who in the mid-2000s alluded to an ethnically diverse ‘disgusting, selfish, violent underclass’, and then later, in the late 2010s, became a noted champion of the ‘white-working class’ against the ‘liberal elite’. It is almost as if — Sarkar wryly suggests — it is not the ‘class’ bit of ‘white working class’ that Delingpole is interested in.

As a self-proclaiming literal communist, Sarkar is a proud voice of the Left. But she is not blind to its failures and, crucially, the role she herself has played in them. Throughout the text Sarkar shows a degree of humility scarcely present among the British commentariat, to go no further than the example of Delingpole. On recounting the narrative of Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat in the 2019 election, Sarkar confesses that like many others she got Brexit wrong, overlooking its nuances and underestimating its impact on the electorate. Owning such accountability, as in this instance, can’t have been easy. But it is certainly a necessary precondition of left revival. Such self-awareness on Sarkar’s part is a recurring theme in Minority Rule. So too is a nice line in outward-facing accessibility: Marxist ideas — materialism, class consciousness, alienation — are discussed in simple, clarified ways.

Some of the book’s most affecting passages are anecdotes about Sarkar’s nightmarish encounters with the British media, and it is here that her ambiguous position in the identity debate is most starkly brought to the fore. She recalls being invited onto a Channel 4 TV show called Genderquake, apparently to discuss trans rights. While she was informed by producers that it would be a ‘respectful collegial debate’, the reality was, as she puts it, a ‘shitshow’. Sarkar and other panellists were met with an audience of anti-trans activists who — after allegedly being actively encouraged by producers to heckle the panel — interrupted discussions with what she terms ‘a barrage of vulgar abuse’. Sarkar is not necessarily wrong for engaging with such platforms. But given that much of her book amounts to a critique of the basic underpinning of such mainstream media ‘debates’, it does leave you wondering why she bothered with such dismal interactions in the first place.

In the final instance, Minority Rule is more diagnostic than prescriptive. Most left-wing readers will find little that is radically new or overly controversial in the book. Sarkar offers no clear solutions. But as she states early on, that wasn’t her intention. Rather, she has the old fundamentals in mind: How did we get here? Why did it happen? Where should we go? Minority Rule supplies convincing answers to the first two questions. While Sarkar leaves the latter more open-ended, she has at least done a great job of trying to steer the left back in the right direction, and — just maybe — pick up some new comrades along the way.