Pre-order Andrew Adonis’ new book ‘5 Days In May’ at the special Progress readers’ rate of £10

‘Is a deal still possible?’ Nick Robinson texted me at 3.26 a.m. on election night.

‘Everything looks possible,’ I texted back.

One of the great dramas of modern British politics unfolded in the wake of the inconclusive 2010 general election. This is the first account from Gordon Brown’s Downing Street of those five days of fraught negotiation. Written in the heat of battle by a key Labour insider, it captures the electric excitement as events took their course, and reflects on the nature of coalition government and what lies ahead.

At the heart of the Blair and Brown governments for twelve years, Andrew Adonis was a member of the Labour team engaged in the coalition negotiations that followed the general election of 2010. In 1998 he joined the No. 10 Policy Unit before entering the House of Lords in 2005 and becoming Minister for Schools until 2008. This decade of pioneering education reform – in particular the creation of the academies programme – is the subject of his previous book Education, Education, Education, also published by Biteback. Under Gordon Brown, he moved to the Department for Transport, first as Railways Minister, then as Secretary of State. Before joining government, Andrew Adonis was a journalist on the Financial Times and The Observer. He was previously a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, where he gained his PhD. His previous books include studies of Parliament, the English class system and the rise and fall of the poll tax.

To pre-order your copy for £10 (RRP £12.99), visit www.politicos.co.uk/promotions and type PROGRESS (all in CAPS) into the box