Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt. He was at the top of Respect – The Unity Coalition's list in the West Midlands region for the 2004 European election and the Respect candidate for the Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election. He also stood for Respect in the 2006 local election in the Bethnal Green South ward of Tower Hamlets in East London, where he came second to Labour. Rees was not selected by the SWP Central Committee to be on the slate for re-election and did not stand independently at the January 2009 conference. Shortly after his partner Lindsey German resigned from the SWP in 2010, Rees and 41 other members followed disenchanted with the party's direction, internal regime and approach to united fronts (18 others who had resigned in weeks prior also supported the resignations). In 2012, A People's History of London, which Rees co-authored with Lindsey German, was published. The book is a history of London radicalism which documents working (or lower) class struggles in London from the Romans to the present day. Jerry White in The Guardian wrote: "Those who continue to uphold London's living traditions of protest will be able to take heart from this fresh and welcome look at the city's history." White described the book as "a very selective people's history" which does not cover the bombings committed by the IRA and by Islamists on 7 July 2005. Jo Lo Dicio in The Independent on Sunday wrote: "Had these two been political pamphleteers through the ages, one doubts many revolutionary sparks would ever have been lit." A book on the Levellers and the English Revolution based on his doctoral research was published by Verso in 2016. Rees is currently active in the organisation Counterfire for which he has written two short books, Strategy and Tactics and alongside Joseph Daher The People Demand: A short history of the Arab revolutions. He participated in and reported on the Egyptian revolution in 2011 about which he made two TV documentaries, Inside the Egyptian Revolution and Egypt in Revolution. For the Islam Channel, he is the writer and presenter of the political history documentary series Timeline and a presenter of The Report and Politics and Media current affairs programmes. He has appeared as a political commentator in Ken Loach's The Spirit of '45 and in Amir Amarani's We Are Many. In September 2013, Iain Dale and a panel for The Daily Telegraph