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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] the standards of France, Germany, Denmark etc, it is one. But uniquely, among European states as far as I know, there is a minority of the ruling Conservative Party which wants the state to fail; which welcomes a failing state; which regards the state as essentially a necessary evil to be kept as small […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] original formulation of something akin to the ‘power elite’ idea was the 1959 anthology edited by historian Hugh Thomas, The Establishment. This suggested that there were unelected conservative forces within the state which existed to prevent any (elected) liberal/left from enacting policies which threatened the status quo. The recent talk on the right about […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] fundamental point, why should we take him seriously? Then there was Nick Timothy, former chief of staff to Tory PM Theresa May. Trying to big-up the outgoing Conservative Party’s economic record, he asserted: Inflation, borrowing and unemployment are all lower than when Labour last left office. Debt is lower than in the 1950s, and […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: […] has been operating among what used to known as the Stupid Party. By their omissions shall ye know them In his Times column on 28 March, former Conservative MP Matthew Parris worried about the ‘magic money tree’ the Conservatives had discovered with which to pay employees and employers whose livelihoods had been shut down […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] the sake of liberal values may and 23 24 The radical right in the USA has spotted it. See ‘Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media’ at or . 25 9 26 seem a paradox, but it is not illogical. For latter-day hyper-liberals, free speech is useful only so long as […]

Our Fight for Democracy: A History of Democracy in the United Kingdom by John Strafford

Lobster Issue

[…] of Ministers should meet in public. 32: The European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons should meet in public. 39: Both the Labour Party and the Conservative Party should reform themselves to become democratic bodies answerable to their membership so that members can change the Constitution of their party on the basis of […]

The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is Wrong about Islam by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] the BBC and everything that the United Kingdom stood for. I considered liberal capitalism the best system of economics the world has had. I was a conventional Conservative. I wrote for Conservative newspapers. He worked alongside Boris Johnson at The Spectator and was its political correspondent at the time of 9/11. Not long afterwards […]

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