The miners and the secret state

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[PDF file]: […] coups, surveillance, disinformation and smears against members of the Labour government, climaxing with Wilson’s retirement.1 1 In the midst of this Mrs Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party, was briefed by the anti-subversion network and apparently took on board the Soviet conspiracy theory. Her use of the expression ‘the enemy within’ about the […]

South of the Border

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[PDF file]: […] a number of years now. His ‘dead cat’ strategy7 has regularly proven counter-productive. Yet his firm Crosby Trextor was paid £18.6m for their part in the 2017 Conservative election campaign. Yes . . . £18.6m for that campaign – the one that reduced the government’s majority to a thread. Top of the tree for […]

Going South: why Britain will have a third world economy by 2014 by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013)

[PDF file]: […] have mobilised a majority against Castle and Wilson. Although considering In Place of Strife to be much less comprehensive an approach than would be taken by a Conservative government, Edward Heath decides against a purely party political opposition to the scheme. An admirer of the West German industrial relations system,5 of which In Place […]

Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics by Peter Geoghegan

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] social media abuse – there is much talk but little action. As I write, no better illustration of this can be seen than the submission by the Conservative Party to the Committee on Standards in Public Life’s review of electoral arrangements.4 Reports of this submission suggest a weakening rather than a strengthening of oversight. […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 93 (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 […]

My Life, Our Times by Gordon Brown

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[PDF file]: […] dependent on the Americans. From this point of view, the so-called ‘Special Relationship’ was a vital concern of British capitalism and its political servants both Labour and Conservative. This recognition long pre-dated New Labour. The post-war Attlee government had recognised it fifty years earlier, although without any of New Labour’s enthusiasm. In the 1980s […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad by Michela Wrong

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad. What Wrong has to say is tremendously important, not least because of the Conservative government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda despite – or perhaps because of – the Kagame regime’s wholly justified reputation for repression and murder. The […]

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