The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] took office in 1974. That narrative says that Labour politicians don’t understand the economy and can’t be trusted with it. This narrative had such power over Gordon Brown and Tony Blair that they spent the period in opposition from 199497 endlessly endorsing it and promising not to challenge its perceived prescriptions. When he was […]

The economic crisis

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[PDF file]: […] the world does not include political approval or disapproval. NuLab didn’t understand this. Their initial posture towards the City was fear mixed with buttkissing. As chancellor, Gordon Brown may have famously not worn the expected dinner suit for his address at the annual meeting of the City bigwigs, but as his central policy that […]

Off Message, and, Standing for Something

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] origin of New Labour is to be found in the historic defeats that the Thatcher government inflicted on the labour movement in the 1980s. Without these defeats, Brown would have remained on the left and Blair would never have become party leader. Marshall-Andrews’ own particular concerns are with New Labour’s colonial wars and its […]

The Return of the Public and the Death of the Liberal Class

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] He’s travelled a fair bit of the world and knows a lot of law. He brings both together in a clearly written, heavyweight assault on Blair and Brown governments packed with lawyers with little apparent concern for either the legality of their actions on their far-reaching consequences for human rights and wellbeing. From surveillance […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] flow of cheap consumer products opened up by the mass industrialisation of East Asia. But what, plausibly, has more impact on consumer prices: a letter from Gordon Brown to the governor of the Bank of England, or 300 million Chinese moving from the countryside to work in factories? If you can buy a 50-inch […]

Survival of the Richest: escape fantasies of the tech billionaires, by Douglas Rushkoff

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] by Epstein, launched his One Laptop per Child project in 2005. Addressing education and literacy in the non-developed world, and endorsed by many politicians (including notably, Gordon Brown), it ended in 2014 without coming anywhere near meeting its objectives. Similarly, a Global Hackathon involving Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Microsoft and many others, to ‘solve’ the […]

Treasure Islands: Tax havens and the men who stole the world by Nicholas Shaxson

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] had the air of a depressed man, knowing it may be too late to rebalance the UK economy and defeat the forces given freedom by Thatcher, Blair, Brown and successive governors of the Bank of England. Despite a positive reception and widespread reviews the book has not fired up resistance. But it has become […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] flow of cheap consumer products opened up by the mass industrialisation of East Asia. But what, plausibly, has more impact on consumer prices: a letter from Gordon Brown to the governor of the Bank of England, or 300 million Chinese moving from the countryside to work in factories? If you can buy a 50-inch […]

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