The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] 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: ‘The question for Britain is what aspect of our culture, our government, and our national […]

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 […]

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 […]

Is this what failure looks like? Brian Sedgemore 1937–2015

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] Strategy (AES), adopted by Tony Benn as a campaigning tool in early 1975. Framed to cast Labour as firmly opposed to the decisions taken by the preceding Conservative government (and of course, by implication, critical of any accommodation with those hinted at 1 Labour won Wandsworth – at that point a pre-Thatcher, pregentrified area […]

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 […]

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

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010)

[PDF file]: […] 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 […]

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 […]

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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