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 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] 1970s Milton Friedman’s views on the money supply – monetarism – and its centrality in government economic policy had become adopted by the Thatcher faction of the Conservative Party, apparently by Labour Prime Minister Callaghan2 4 and by sections of the higher media commentariat. In 1980 Friedman presented a series of hour long films […]

Newton on Keynes

Lobster Issue

[…] of post-war British society. A range of political and economic philosophies and traditions went into the version embraced by the Attlee government and indeed successive Labour and Conservative administrations all the way to 1979. Nurtured by over a century of humanistic and religious teaching, and a respect for the rights of the individual citizen […]

View from Bridge 88 copy

Lobster Issue

[…] is presumably not wholly coincidental that Britain’s decline from 10th in the OECD ‘league tables’ of economic performance to its present 18th began in 1980 when the Conservative government scrapped all the remaining controls on overseas investment of British-generated wealth. *new* Is Doty dotty? I have been slightly interested in the UFO phenomenon since […]

Brexit beginnings

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] a merchant bank. He was thus well aware of the psychological outlook that existed in the City. 2 2 Enter Goldsmith Post-1992, the official position of the Conservative government remained that the UK would rejoin the ERM as soon as was practicable. The problem was Major never had enough Conservative votes to execute such […]

Beaumont novel copy

Lobster Issue

[…] reports, while lawyers provide litigation support. . . . What’s missing from those paragraphs (and the report generally) is the millions the Russians have given to the Conservative Party.4 Why is it missing? The Intelligence and Security Committee has a Conservative majority. Add those Russian millions to the more than ten million given to […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] 1 or . 2 3 27th at . 4 1 in the OECD ‘league tables’ of economic performance to its present 18th began in 1980 when the Conservative government scrapped all the remaining controls on overseas investment of British-generated wealth. *new* Is Doty dotty? I have been slightly interested in the UFO phenomenon since […]

Keir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] 35, 39, 52, 60-61 4 6 difficulties caused by the election of a left-winger, Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the Labour Party in the aftermath of the Conservative victory. Corbyn’s election was very much a repudiation of Blairism and New Labour by the party membership. Corbyn promised to end Labour’s embrace of neo-liberalism and […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] of the Ukrainian farright.28 Looking at Skidelsky’s Wikipedia entry,29 the man has had a complex political journey. A founder member of the SDP, he moved to the Conservative Party. At one point he was appointed a Conservative spokesman in the House of Lords but was dismissed by then Conservative leader William Hague for publicly […]

A tale of two Islingtons: How Blair opened the door for Corbyn

Lobster Issue 77 (Summer 2019)

[PDF file]: […] an uneasy truce between two organized groupings, had the failure of Prime Minister James Callaghan to hold an autumn ‘78 election not opened the way to a Conservative win in ‘79. After which the failure of Callaghan to immediately resign the leadership of the Labour Party led to the creation of the SDP, to […]

Accessibility Toolbar