The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-toGDP’.12 Looking further back, the figures show that, with the discovery of North Sea oil and the dominance of the Conservative Party in the 80s and 90s, the UK ‘burden’ fell. Between 1981 and 1995, the UK tax burden fell from a high of 33.9 per cent […]

Sex scandals and sexual blackmail in America’s deep politics

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] (Marla Maples) pregnant while still married to his first wife (Ivana Trump), and bragged of having ‘three other girlfriends’ while ‘living with Marla’.1 Despite this record, many conservative evangelical leaders and other champions of ‘family values’ supported his candidacy against former Senator Hillary Clinton.2 Trump appears to be surviving even apparently calculated leaks by […]

What if…

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] ready to tear up the roots just as things are getting better and trust your nation’s destiny to this extraordinary woman? Hardly a socialist question. Indeed, a conservative one. But it works. No, the nation rather comfortably replies, on the whole, we ain’t. It was a victory for consensus politics and the British way, […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] inflame tensions between City and Europe’. Reading (just) between the lines of his speech it is obvious that Boris is offering himself as the leader of the Conservative Party who will take the UK out of the EU to preserve the City of London as the financial crime centre of the world economy. Footnotes-R-us […]

Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England by Sebastian Payne

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England Sebastian Payne London: Macmillan, 2021, £21, h/b John Booth Whether Boris Johnson gets bored with No 10 or nervy Conservative Party funders push him out of the door, the author of Broken Heartlands finds little to comfort those hoping to see Sir Keir Starmer in Downing […]

Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] (except, for me, those on cricket) are worth reading. What is also of interest is that Oborne is, as he himself tells us, very much ‘a traditional Conservative’. This was in the August 2025 issue of Byline Times, in the same column in which he actually goes on to strongly oppose the removal of […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013)

[PDF file]: […] apparently come before the national interest – and the interests of the armed forces. Also reflecting on Iraq ten years on was erstwhile MI6 officer and now Conservative MP Rory Stewart, who took part in the invasion/occupation. Stewart concluded: 31 Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘Iraq war planning wholly irresponsible, say senior UK military figures’, . 32 […]

The Atlantic Semantic

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014)

[PDF file]: […] him revealing a London-based Soviet spy circle. These came from Czech defector Josef Frolik.2 3 Teacher observed that in February 1979, two weeks after Thatcher’s election as Conservative leader, a House of Lords debate on ‘Subversive and Extremist Elements’, initiated by Lord Chalfont, aired the Frolik allegations.2 4 Josten was a member of the […]

Gordon Brown: in the country of the blind…

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] experience on her part, Mattinson lacks a certain perspective while making many of her otherwise correct points. The role of the SDP in disastrously splitting the anti- Conservative vote in 1983 and 1987 is not mentioned at all; nor are the very real difficulties for any major political party, led by even the most […]

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