The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] – was rising before 2008 and is caused by UK taxes being too low. But no mainstream British politician will argue for raising taxes. While in office Blair, Brown and Balls encouraged the delusion that the UK could have American levels of taxation and EU levels of public services. Apologising for that and the […]

Book reviews

Lobster Issue

[…] New Labour, he really gives the game away. While he sources more in this book than in his weekly Observer column, there’s still too much referenced as ‘Blair inner circle’ and ‘interviews, senior officers’ to accept this as anything like a historical record. What it does manage to do is confirm the New Labour […]

Debunking the Myth of America’s Poodle: Great Britain Wants War by Nu’man Abd al-Wahid

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] are desperately seeking refuge in Britain, in which case they are maligned and abused. (p. 8) Looking back on the invasion of Iraq, he insists that the Blair government was not dragged reluctantly into the conflict – a poodle on a lead, so to speak – but was energetically urging an interventionist policy on […]

The Lexit delusion

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: The Lexit delusion Scott Newton The question of Britain’s relationship to the EU has been a real problem for the Labour Party since the 2016 referendum. Does its result offer the British Left a great opportunity to break free from the restrictions which come with membership of the organization and tie the nation to a […]

Books on New Labour

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] New Labour, he really gives the game away. While he sources more in this book than in his weekly Observer column, there’s still too much referenced as ‘Blair inner circle’ and ‘interviews, senior officers’ to accept this as anything like a historical record. What it does manage to do is confirm the New Labour […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] her then ‘progressive’ views on child sexuality, and fed it to The Daily Telegraph.10 TB’s associates Meanwhile Tony Blair’s commercial activities are expanding rapidly. His ‘consultancy’, Tony Blair Associates, now employs 80 people, according to an article by Edward Heathcote-Amory 8 <http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Study-reveals-true-extentof.5230278.jp 9 The Mail spotted that Mandelson was wearing a watch which cost […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] on economic policy, which in turn was required to demonstrate a break with the perceived failure of Labour’s economic record of the past.’ (emphases added) So: the Blair government had to demonstrate to the City its ‘fitness to govern’ and thus acquired ‘permission’ to do so. Why is this necessary? Because of the ‘perceived […]

The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq by Emma Sky

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015) FREE

[PDF file]: […] that working for the Occupation changed her. How does she deal with this? The narrative device she employs is to make a joke of it. When Tony Blair visited the country in May 2007, she was invited to meet him at the British Embassy. The Embassy was ‘rocketed….minutes before Blair arrived – he was […]

Brexit Revisited: Europe Didn’t Work, and, Brexit Unfolded

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] grip of German bankers intent on preaching protestant rectitude to ill-disciplined countries – which amounted to every country apart from itself, and even itself at times. Thatcher, Blair and Brown The policy choices that the UK made and then induced the EU to follow, were promoting globalisation and reducing protectionism through Thatcherism, and then […]

View from Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] say that the free market moves since 1979 have all been a mistake. Even if Mr Starmer thought it, this would entail criticising Mrs Thatcher’s acolytes, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and he won’t do that. To judge by Chancellor Reeves’ Mansion House speech in November, she isn’t going to entertain any deviant ideas.3 […]

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