Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power by David McKnight

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] turned on Cameron’s government with a vengeance. On 25 March the Sunday Times broke the ‘cash for access’ story with accompanying video, forcing the resignation of the Conservative Party’s cotreasurer, the appropriately named Peter Cruddas. This was accompanied by a systematic savaging of George Osborne’s budget in the Sun. It was condemned as a […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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