RED TORY: My Corbyn Chemsex Hell

by Huw Lemmey

Tom Buckle is an ambitious young moderate Labour apparatchik, rising happily through the party bureaucracy on a diet of bottomless brunches, legitimate concerns and drug-fueled Blairite sex parties. That is until he meets Otto, a charismatic young radical whose urge for cocks, communism, and a mysterious plot for the victory of the holetariat opens his eyes to a changing world. Finding himself thrown into a chaotic new political landscape of pigfucking PMs, frog-frenzied neonazis and falafel-throwing communists, Tom has to pick a side. Will he manage to find a third way to a safe seat, or will Corbyn's terrifying red horde make his moderate mission impossible? And can Tom resist the most seductive of all highs--pure, high-grade socialism, main-lined straight into London's clogged and throbbing veins? So much for a kinder, gentler form of politics!

Genres: LGBT, Politics, Fiction, London

400 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2019

Reviews

[Flora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Horny, hallucinogenic, hilarious. Couldn't put this silly smut down. Written with the keen satirical eye of someone who lived through the oscillating, hopeful but ultimately tragic years of Corbyn's Labour Party, and an *ahem* intimate familiarity with the East London gay scene. Hot.

[Sof · Rating 4 out of 5]

i just wish i had read this on drugs

[Fionn McGorry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious and rough and ready

[Avie Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delicious. This book reminded me of ‘A Very British Coup’ but with more hardcore gay sex.

At times, ‘Red Tory’ is playfully overblown with scads of really decadent description, much of which is of the oodles of sex, and many bizzare moments filled with aerial pastry and falafel wielding mobs but it's also a thoughtful and telling picture of people, especially smug middle-road Labour politicos, responing to the election of Corbyn.

In her blurbed review Linda Stuppart says that the characters are “terminally unlikeable” but I was really rooting for Tom, Red Tory scum though he is, to be redeemed by hot German communist Otto, fall in love and find his inner socialist.

‘Red Tory’ is a commie bildungsroman, an erotic thriller, an astute political statire, a poignant gay love story and it’s also just bloody funny:

“The fascist pig will be back any moment.”

Tom paused a second, nonplussed.

“Monster?”

"Yes, Monster! He is a fascist. Now, quick”

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a long time listener of Bad Gays and so I bought this book ages ago and have left it to languish for too long, as is my wont. What a great summer read. It doesn't actually all take place in the summer but it has the vibe of a summer in your 20s, in London, very specifically in 2015, spent sweating and scheming and having sex and remaking yourself and being filled with regret and falling in love. My equivalent summer was never as exciting as this one - note for the uninitiated this is a book filled with very explicit and adventurous sex scenes which range from hot to nightmarish - but there is something special about reading a book where you recognise the exact kind of dinner party guest/Party young up and comer/sexy European communist etc. Lemmey has a great eye for satire which, in a book which is all about excess, is often done with a very light touch. Really felt the East Anglian roots of our protagonist with his comfy fen-adjacent home and centre right leanings. So much fun to be had here.

This is a really messy book which is not for those who like to keep their literary ducks in a row. It reaches ambitiously in all directions - with hallucinatory drug sequences, dashes of surrealism, the aforementioned very specific political satire, lots and lots of sex and a very sweet love story. I don't think all of these things sit perfectly together. Rather they jostle for attention, with a single chapter dedicated to a character's depression only for that character never to be seen again, or Otto, our sexy communist, becoming central to the protagonist's life without either him or the reader really realising that it is happening. I like the chaos and while my taste is always for more surrealism, more of the fantastic, I think Lemmey manages to capture how big political events really integrate themselves into people's lives - in very partial, sometimes intense, often fleeting ways.

This is a story about a very specific kind of person and doesn't pretend to be about or for everyone. But the utopian dream at its core, about a world where we could all see the horrors of capitalism and the beauty of its overthrow by embracing a collective love of pleasure, stops it from feeling navel-gazey. It is hard to read it in the wake of the successful purging of the Labour party of its left wing, but Lemmey makes clear that Corbynism wasn't ever really about Corbyn or Labour but about the possibility of something impossible happening and I think that is more thinkable now. A man with a picture of Liz Kendall above his bed is much more of a joke now than it was pre-Corbyn and that can only be considered a good thing.

Minor gripe that there are a lot of typos which always trip me up and make me long for a publishing economy which valued proof reading but don't let that stop you from descending into this fascinating hot mess of a book.

[Thomas Hale · Rating 4 out of 5]

The followup to CHUBZ retreads similar pornographic ground while skewing the radical potentials of sex and intoxication in a different direction. This book is more targeted and detailed in its political satire, with a larger cast of characters and a plot that ranges from espionage to week-long drug-fuelled sex parties to Red Scare paranoia. As with Lemmey's previous book, reading this in 2022 after the Sensible Moderates' brutal victory over hope has a different flavour. The central romance between Blairite liberal Tom and handsome, bearded radical Otto is complex but sweet and ultimately satisfying. Instead of a victory of "reason" over hearts and minds, Lemmey's hero yearns for a victory of the heart over the mind, of love and empathy over structure and procedure.
Also there's a LOT of sex here, as one might expect. It's creative and passionate, with some excellent and hallucinatory scenes, but after the initial thrill wears off it feels like window dressing compared to the tensions of the central romance. Maybe this was deliberate, to contrast the highs of anonymous orgies with the passionate intensity of emotional connection. Whatever the intention, it weighed down the book for me.
I liked this book a great deal, finishing it cover to cover in a couple of sittings, but it didn't quite wow me as much as I hoped. Still, if you liked his previous book, you'll probably like this.

[Matthew Isard-McNulty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the elements that felt like a modern Labour party version of the classic Line of Beauty. That was often very hot to read, funny at many points, and all together familiar and enjoyable. The parts to do with pastries and overthrowing the system with a communist drug I found harder to get my head round or get into. Probably went over my head but it did mean I was reading slower by the end

[Isabelle]

GREAT BOOK! absolutely nuts but in a great way, very easy to read couldn't put it down and what a bizarre but fantastic concept. Makes the world of chemise seem appealing in a strange but dangerous way.

[Stephanie Gavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

YES!

[Kate Knowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

SO FUNNY

[Steely Dean]

babys first audiobook

[Flungoutofspace (Chris) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be the best book I’ve read all year!

[Matthias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Top drie boeken om te lezen in het openbaar, zeker op de metro tussen twee mensen gekneld die daardoor zeker mee kunnen lezen.

Fascinerend boek... gaat nog lang in mijn hoofd blijven hangen.

[Shriya Ruparelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Graphic, kinda fun, weird, and a bit gross? More a 2.5
Not sure who it is for or who I’d recommend it to but kind of glad I read it ?

[astrid · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Ridiculous, but also undeniably So Much Fun

[Jak Merriman · Rating 5 out of 5]

revolutionary and silly and so so so sexy