While Monbiot's manifesto of a "new politics" has some very good sections and is well written enough to remain engaging throughout, the political analysis it lays out is pretty rubbish.

The book is a mishmash of liberal and social-democratic clichés, with a smattering of utopian schemes on top.

Monbiot displays the incredibly limited imagination typical of a liberal. While he cals for 'revolutionary' changes to the political system, these never amount to anything more than tinkering around the edges of capitalism. In his ideal world, there is still racism, nations, very rich and very poor communities, exploitation, war, weapons manufacturers, bourgeois parliaments and right-wing demagogues. There will still be totalitarian dictatorships. People must still flee their countries looking for asylum from persecution. The very rich still retain their power. We will still be needing to constantly be on guard to save liberalism from illiberal threats. We can't try and do too much, because if we try too hard, that will just lead to tyranny, apparently. His vision, intended to inspire hope and change, is "what if the world was just like it is now, but a tiny bit nicer".

He is also explicitly for keeping capitalism intact, for example suggesting economic crises are not endemic to capitalism and only caused by a rampant financial sector; and that we still need the state in order to protect us from ... the state.

His prescriptions for a nice world include such utopian reveries as bringing back the commons (through a complex scheme of rewriting property laws), placing the home in an equal economic position of importance as the workplace (by wishing it there), valuing the environment more (by adding it to economic diagrams), having people have more input into the economy (and forcing the government to abide by their decisions by... well that was never specified). Monbiot is incredibly idealistic, in the sense that he believes that what is necessary to change the world is not structural change, but simply for people to change their ideas.

Finally, he is explicitly electoralist. The book is designed as a series of policies to implements, and for others to vote for. His plan for implementing his disjointed set of prescriptions comes down to mass phone banking for Bernie Sanders-type social-democrats, and politely asking politicians (and remember, right-wing politicians are humans too, so be nice!) He is explicitly against industrial organising, believing instead in involving the precariat and the jobless in community organising, such as neighbourhood gardens and film nights. A recent statistical analysis of democratisation movements showing that those led by industrial workers are most likely to success shows just how wrong Monbiot’s politics are.

However, not everything in the book is totally terrible. A section early on in the book about human nature is excellent, cutting through the common sense argument that people are naturally competitive and violent, and arguing strongly that humans are naturally cooperative and benevolent, and that it is our social environment that breeds competition. It would have been good if this thread were weaved throughout the book, but on many later occasions he falls back into the trap of common sense anti-human arguments, for example a terrible section on how people vote that pre-supposes that everyone is stupid and can never vote in their own interest.

Another good section is the two chapters covering neoliberalism and Keynseamism, which lay out the horrific history of the former and the inherent shortcomings of the latter. Unfortunately, Monbiot draws incredibly confused conclusions—despite the obvious conclusion that should have been drawn from the information he presents being that capitalism is an inherently contradictory, unequal and crisis-prone system that can never be reformed, he instead concludes that all that is needed is an intellectual like him to come along every few years to provide a statement of a “new politics” for everyone to get behind and provide them with “hope” and everything will be fine and dandy.

So while there are good sections, they are unfortunately few and far between. His book is intended to inspire hope. Instead, it ends up being incredibly dispiriting.