David Swift (author)

David Swift (born 1987) is an English writer and historian.^[1]

Swift in 2022

Swift studied history at Girton College, University of Cambridge.^[2]

Works

• For Class and Country: the Patriotic Left and the First World War (2017)
• A Left for Itself: Left-wing Hobbyists and Performative Radicalism (2019)
• The Identity Myth: Why We Need to Embrace our Differences to Beat Inequality (2022)

Swift's work focuses on left-wing activism and on different identities, such as class, race and gender.^[3] He has written for a variety of newspapers and periodicals including the New Statesman,^[4] Tribune,^[5] The Times,^[6] The Independent^[7] and UnHerd.^[8]

Swift's first book, a history of the British Left during the First World War, was described by reviewer Prof Peter Stansky as ‘an important contribution to the ever-fascinating subject of the history of the British left [and] the development of the Labour party’.^[9]

Swift's second book, A Left for Itself,^[10] was the first analysis of 'political hobbyism' in the UK,^[11][12] and focused on what he termed 'performative radicalism' in the era of the internet and social media.^[13] It was heralded as a definitive analysis of the failure of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party at the 2019 United Kingdom general election.^[14]

In 2022 Swift published his third book, The Identity Myth,^[15][16] which interrogated common understandings of different 'identities' such as class, race, gender, and generation.^[17] It was a Next Big Idea Club finalist for 2022.^[18]