Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation by Liz Featherstone

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018) FREE

[PDF file]: […] sold himself to the Parliamentary Labour Party as a man of vision, of farsighted and deep intellect and sought publicly to distance himself from the perception of Blair as a lightweight, focus group-driven politician. So as a ‘strong’ leader, should he follow his own instincts, or trust in the views of small groups of […]

9/11 attracts mainstream critics

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] tried to generate public interest in 9/11 is unable to join them. Michael Meacher, a minister in Labour governments led by Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Tony Blair, died in 2015. He was an early critic of Blair’s decision to invade Iraq 8 and his 2003 Guardian article on 9/11 and the ‘war on […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] of antisemitism plaguing the party.’14 In short, the Starmer-led faction of the Labour Party has received significant funding from the Israel lobby in Britain, as did the Blair faction twenty years ago.15 *new* The great churn After more than three years since its first edition, I was finally handed a copy of the wacky […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] “cancer” of antisemitism plaguing the party.’14 In short, the Starmer-led Labour Party receives significant funding from the Israel lobby in Britain, as was the case during the Blair years.15 *new* The great churn After more than three years since its first edition, I was finally handed a copy of the wacky British conspiracy newspaper […]

Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund

Lobster Issue 90 (2025) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] Pogrund’s book is certainly a corrective to the subtitle of Eagleton’s book: there was no journey to the right; that’s where it started. In this regard Tony Blair comes close to the truth, quoted as saying (p. 184): It’s possible his journey isn’t like Neil Kinnock, where you start on the left and then […]

Apocryphylia

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of the would be lobbyists by mentioning the £14k per month retainer. Cunningham, who organised the 1992 Labour general election campaign and served as a minister under Blair 1997-1999 (before being reshuffled to the back benches) was the subject of an enquiry by the House of Lords’ Committee for Privileges in 2008 about how, […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] battle, in particular from Paul Vallely. The paper’s readers were not told that Vallely, created a Companion of St Michael and St George (CMG) during the Tony Blair premiership, was ghost writer of the Geldof autobiography Is That It? No critical words about the multimillionaire exBoomtown Rat in Private Eye either: his Ten Alps […]

The State of Secrecy: Spies and the Media in Britain by Richard Norton-Taylor

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] opposed by openness (good), the actual ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’ of the book reveal that Norton-Taylor is telling a slightly different story. Chief among the villains is Tony Blair. Blair’s refusal to openly admit his commitment to invading Iraq ensured British troops were sent to war unprepared. The lack of training, equipment and local intelligence […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] Simon Matthews, ‘The once and future king?’ in Lobster 56. And the fact that he did so is one of the reasons the NuLab faction – Brown, Blair et al – detested him: he knew more than they did, knew they were talking shit and told them so. 18 7 happens when you let […]

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