With the General Election on the horizon, we’re all tuned into the latest developments To ensure you’re well read and up-to-speed with the race, check out this collection of books about politics.

The Politics Book is a captivating introduction to the world's greatest thinkers and their political big ideas that continue to shape our lives today, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Politics in this overview guide to the subject, brilliant for novices looking to find out more and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike.

Why do some prime ministers manage to get things done, while others miserably fail? What is a 'special adviser' and how did they take over British political life? And why is the House of Lords more functional than most people think?

Most of us have a sense that our political system doesn't seem to work, but struggle to articulate exactly why. And for good reason: our political and financial institutions are cloaked in secrecy, archaic terminology, ancient custom and impenetrable jargon. Now, in How Westminster Works...and Why It Doesn't, expert political journalist Ian Dunt is lifting the lid on British politics to expose every aspect of the setup in a way that can be understood and challenged. From Downing Street to Whitehall, the Commons to the Lords, this book is an indispensable guide to our political system - and how we might begin to fix it.

Code of Conduct by Christopher Bryant is being hailed as the book you need to read before going to the polls on July 4th. Longstanding senior Labour politician and minister Chris Bryant tells the inside story of what's gone wrong with Westminster - and how we might solve it.

We live in an age of fury and confusion. A new crisis erupts before the last one has finished: financial crisis, Brexit, pandemic, war in Ukraine, inflation, strikes. Prime Ministers come and go but politics stays divided and toxic. It is tempting to switch off the news, tune out and hope things will get back to normal. Except, this is the new normal, and our democracy can only work if enough people stay engaged without getting enraged. But how? To answer that question, award-winning journalist Rafael Behr, in Politics, takes the reader on a personal journey from despair at the state of politics to hope that there is a better way of doing things, with insights drawn from three decades as a political commentator and foreign correspondent.

Every thinking person knows that a great change is needed in our country. Will Hutton's passionate book This Time No Mistakes shows how the right and left have gone wrong over the course of the last century - and how we can remake a better Britain. Britain's inability to invest in itself is at the heart of our problems.

Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, Politics On the Edge is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life and a remarkable portrait of our age. A searing insider's account of ten extraordinary years in Parliament from Rory Stewart, former Cabinet minister and co-presenter of breakout hit podcast The Rest Is Politics.

Over the last decade, the British people have seen five different Conservative Prime Ministers, with five different missions and five messages to the nation. From the ashes of a financial crisis, to a break from the EU, to a global pandemic, governments - and ideologies - have changed, but Tory power has clung on. Witty, hair-raising and brilliantly sourced, The Right To Rule by Ben Riley-Smith links as never before stories of betrayal in Cameron's Coalition, the rifts behind the Referendum, the travails of May, the chaos of the pandemic, the sagas of Johnson, the Truss implosion and the Sunak patch-job.

The Decade in Tory by Russell Jones is an inglorious, rollicking and entirely true account of ten years of demonstrable lies, relentless incompetence, serial corruption, abuse of power, dereliction of duty and hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths. With his signature scathing wit, Russell Jones breaks down the government's interminable failures year by year, covering everything from David Cameron's pledge to tackle inequality - which reduced UK life expectancy for the first time since 1841 - through to Boris Johnson's calamitous response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It will leave you gasping and wondering: how could things get any worse?

With the strong possibility of Labour forming our next government, it is fascinating to consider the last time the party stood on the verge of power, back in 1997. At that time, future Europe Minister Denis MacShane had a ringside seat that he would occupy for the next decade or so, living through Cool Britannia, the Good Friday Agreement, Peter Mandelson's multiple resignations, Princess Diana's death and Tony Blair's seeming invincibility. New Labour may be remembered as an unstoppable force, but MacShane's diaries reveal that while, outwardly, all seemed to be going well, the personal rivalries, slights and petty jealousies between the party's big beasts meant that it was never far from disaster. MacShane was a regular in Downing Street from the moment of Labour's election victory, and his candid, intimate diaries in Labour Takes Power show figures such as Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Peter Mandelson, Clare Short and Alastair Campbell in a light in which they've never been seen before, detailing the personalities as much as the politics of Labour's most successful stint in government.

The Liberal Democrats is the definitive account of the rise, fall and future prospects of the Liberal Democrats, the party that threatened to break the mould of British politics but suffered electoral calamity after entering government with the Conservatives. Retracing the Lib Dems' path to government and subsequent near oblivion, the book explores the relationship between the party and the electorate in a post-coalition, post-Brexit, post-pandemic era. It offers a deep analysis of the electoral strategy that enabled growth and precipitated failure, explaining how and why the party got the coalition so wrong and plotting a potential future.

For more ideas on what to read next, check out which books triumphed at the Parliamentary Book of the Year Awards 2024.