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 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), […]

Back to the future (again)

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[PDF file]: […] pinned on the burgeoning punk scene. Alas, Rhoda Dakar (later lead singer in The Bodysnatchers) recalls ‘Joe Strummer talked in slogans’; Paul Weller proclaimed he would vote Conservative at the next election;4 Malcolm McLaren was too obviously a hustler; Ian Dury and John Lydon were, in different ways, unpredictable. This left Tom Robinson (who […]

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 […]

Collapse of stout party: Eden, Suez and America

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: Collapse of stout party Eden, Suez and America Simon Matthews Have you heard the one about the Conservative Prime Minister who is disowned by the right-wing of the Tory Party for not seeing through a bombastic and nationalist policy, and disowned by its left-wing for duplicity and generally ridiculed by the wider public? Forget […]

How our politicians helped to kill UK manufacturing

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] Barber was Heath’s Chancellor the Exchequer. Of the Thatcher/Major period, 1979-97 he notes: ‘ . . . Britain’s manufacturers should have thrived during the 18 years of Conservative rule . . . yet the reverse was the case with the manufacturing industry suffering painful reductions in markets, capacity Dan Atkinson’s thoughts on what is […]

The Oyston Files by Andrew Rosthorn

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: […] two: ‘The reporters David Graham and Bob Satchwell, and their crusading editor Barry Askew, examined Sir Douglas Osmond’s careful description of how Bill Harrison used the pliant Conservative leader of Lancashire County Council to bend Chief Constable Stanley Parr to his will.’ In fairness though, we are at least being given a clear indication […]

Friends of Israel

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] local government and the legal sphere; academia; and the media’. (p. 12) So we are introduced to the work of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), highlighting ‘these groups’ non-transparent and unaccountable modus operandi and the intermittent scandals which occasionally illuminate their activities, as well the close informal […]

A Classless Society: Britain in the 1990s by Alwyn W. Turner

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] discuss the enormous problem of the dinosaurs – on the Thursday before the dinosaurs became extinct. Much the same could be said about fears of a one-party Conservative quasi-dictatorship. Before too long, the notion would be laughable. Maastricht In early June, the Danes stunned the European political establishment by voting in a referendum against […]

Friends of Israel Booth PDF

Lobster Issue

[…] local government and the legal sphere; academia; and the media’. (p. 12) So we are introduced to the work of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), highlighting ‘these groups’ non-transparent and unaccountable modus operandi and the intermittent scandals which occasionally illuminate their activities, as well the close informal […]

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