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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Just Boris by Sonia Purnell

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012)

[PDF file]: […] indeed the only popular politician, in Britain today. He is regarded by many commentators as by far the strongest contender to be the next leader of the Conservative Party, a prospect that most senior Conservatives regard with horror. He might well be our first pantomime prime minister. How has this British Berlusconi, this peculiar […]

Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament – and How to Do It by Chris Bryant

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] countries’. Bryant goes on to make the point that ‘Parliament doesn’t work if you can’t rely on ministers to tell the truth’. (pp 121-123) Of course, the Conservative governments that have been in power since 2010 hardly have a monopoly as far as lying and dishonesty is concerned – a point we shall return […]

Newsinger Bryant copy

Lobster Issue

[…] than others’. Bryant provides some examples: ‘Meller Designs, which was co-owned by David Meller, who had backed Michael Gove’s bid for leader and donated £60,000 to the Conservative Party, was referred by Gove and won £164 million in Covid contracts’.5 There was Greg Hands who ‘passed on a recommendation . . . which led […]

Tittle-Tattle

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] as Chief Secretary of the Treasury in 2010, left the ‘no money left’ note to his successor,1 0 words that have helped Chancellor George Osborne and the Conservative party to frame the assault on Labour’s economic record ever since. Draper’s alma mater, the University of Manchester, was the setting for another electoral defeat for […]

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

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] of bitter Brexit arguments, it leaves behind an EU that would have been very different without it.5 The distancing that took place over time occurred because the Conservative Party stepped back from other political alliances in Europe and identified itself as representing a nationalistic position, spurning political allies. Far from the EU setting itself […]

The Never Trumpers

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: The Never Trumpers Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites Robert P Saldin and Steven M Teles Oxford University Press, 2020, £21.99 (h/b) Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy David Frum New York: Harper, 2020, $28.99 (h/b) Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us Amanda Carpenter New York: HarperCollins (Broadside Books), […]

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