Paul Dimoldenberg has written an account of Labour’s council elections victory in Westminster

WHAT next, a movie?

It’s only been a year, but there’s already a book out on how Labour broke down Tory walls in Westminster to seize control of the council last May.

And you’ll probably be able to guess the identity of the author who was bursting to document how it was all done.

Labour councillor Paul Dimoldenberg, first elected in 1982, had after all spent an age in opposition and his new book, Winning Westminster: How Labour Turned Westminster Council Red, contains one or two inspirational quotes a corny friend might post on Facebook about never giving up. There’s also: ‘It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you do not care who gets the credit’, Harry Truman.

He then gives us 230 pages explaining how the Labour team in Westminster does deserve credit for their election hard work, challenging the idea that this result could be given simple attribution to a backlash against a beleaguered Conservative prime minister.

Boris Johnson, lest we forget, was struggling to explain why he was able to attend parties during the Covid lockdown while others were unable to say goodbye to dying relatives.

And so we get a technical textbook on how local polls work and the days and evenings devoted to them. It’s a peep behind the curtain to find elections obsessive David Boothroyd crunching the numbers around boundary changes and tactics about how to neutralise the Tories’ winning lines about refusing to raise council tax.

Unsurprisingly, Cllr Dimoldenberg seems to enjoy every last lick in his devouring of the Marble Arch Mound fiasco.

You didn’t have to be from the borough to notice how that calamity was swallowing the Tory administration in embarrassment.

For Harrington, it is nice to see in there a recognition of how important engagement with debates in the Westminster Extra had been, amid all the other chat about targeted social media posts and relentless email lists.

The book is also a sweet story about Cllr Dimoldenberg himself, however, explaining how he was on the brink of jacking it all in and heading off on road trips with his wife Linda before becoming wrapped up in his “Operation Hyde Park” – a mission which began as an attempt to distract Tory resources away from more winnable wards, but ended up in his election in a polling district which is normally coloured blue.

In between the geeky polling detail, he mentions Robert Redford and Sir Michael Caine. Harrington couldn’t help wondering whether he had been thinking about who would play who if his book really was ever made into a film.