A provocative and rare insider account of how a new generation of Western plutocrats manoeuvre power from behind closed doors – and how liberal democracy can fight back.

Chrystia Freeland spent decades reporting how foreign dissidents and oligarchs, from Moscow to China and beyond, exploit economic upheaval and hollow out the lives of ordinary people. As a political leader and fierce negotiator, she brought these lessons into halls of power, only to encounter a new order of global elites and tyrannical regimes – this time in the West itself.

Now, as authoritarianism resurges around the world alongside rising tariffs, economic anxiety and democratic instability, she shines a light on the current crisis of liberal democracy. With bold and unusual candour, Freeland exposes how deals are really made and how coalitions fracture when governments fail to deliver for working people, and she argues that trade, security and democracy can no longer be separated. Instead, democracies must build new alliances strong enough to resist foreign autocrats and homegrown oligarchs.

Part memoir, part polemic, Unreliable Boyfriend is a powerful investigation of leadership, ambition, compromise and betrayal, from a public intellectual with a clear view into the dangers, and opportunities, of our unreliable relationship with the United States.