View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] and McTeague are political commentators, Libby Purves is not. Occasional Times columnist, BBC presenter for many years, Purves is the personification of the middle-of-the-road, mainstream, apolitical (but conservative) journalist.4 But things are now so bad even Purves was moved to write that the privatisation of public services has been a disaster5 – something the […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

Britannia Unchained, by Kwasi Kwarteng , Elizabeth Truss et al

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] MP for South West Norfolk London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 Robin Ramsay This is what we might call the manifesto of the group of free marketeers1 within the Conservative Party which briefly had nominal control of British economic policy this year.2 Lobster’s site creator and manager, Ian Tresman, sent me this and suggested I review […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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