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[…] to the lessons of Major’s locust years. His government needs a philosophy, a set of principles, an ideology. Indeed Starmer’s need is greater than Major’s was. A Conservative administration benefits from a sense of purpose; a Labour government cannot survive without one. Progressive politics needs a galvanising, uniting, liberating, crusading temper – the arc […]

Ten Years Hard Labour by Chris Williamson

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] figures in the Parliamentary Labour Party at the time. Several are now members of Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet. or 4 2 election, but not Williamson. He lost to Conservative Amanda Solloway by 41 votes. The election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, in which Williamson took a very active part, gave him a second bite […]

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Lobster Issue

[…] to the lessons of Major’s locust years. His government needs a philosophy, a set of principles, an ideology. Indeed Starmer’s need is greater than Major’s was. A Conservative administration benefits from a sense of purpose; a Labour government cannot survive without one. Progressive politics needs a galvanising, or 3 4 5 2 uniting, liberating, […]

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 […]

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Lobster Issue

[…] destroying Jeremy Corbyn. *new* The MLK files I asked Google why the Trump administration had released the official files on 5 6 The sole exception is former Conservative minister Alan Duncan, whose 2021 memoir begins with complaints about that lobby. See the review by John Booth at or . 7 3 the assassination of […]

Keynes, social democracy and the Great Moving Right Show

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] 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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

A Spy Alone by Charles Beaumont

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] 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 […]

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