There seem to be fewer post-election books doing the rounds after the 2019 federal campaign than has been the case in recent decades. Why is this? The 2019 campaign may have been achingly bland, but the result shocked pollsters, voters, and a news media that had long predicted a Labor win. Morrison’s ‘miracle’ victory is probably Australia’s most historically significant one since the last ‘unlosable’ election, back in 1993, when another cocksure opposition took its own ‘big target’ tax package to the people.

Samantha Maiden’s hefty account of the Coalition’s surprise win – or Labor’s shock loss, which followed a fiasco of a campaign – fills this void. Maiden, a former News Corp and Sky News journalist (now writing for The New Daily), offers a book that, in eighteen chapters, fulfils two critical roles.