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

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[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) FREE

[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 […]

Chris Hani book

Lobster Issue

[…] over the past 40 years or so.4 He quotes a South African report from 1991 describing it as ‘an informal forum of influential representatives of a ” conservative cast of mind”’ – which is what Pinay/Le Cercle was and remains. Among recent British participants are former Conservative MPs Norman Lamont, Rory Stewart and Jonathan […]

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

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE

[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 […]

The British state’s failed attempt to kill off the Freedom of Information Act

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] a uniform commencement of 1 January 2005, which, it was believed, would allow for public sector bodies to consult, confer, and prepare for the new openness. As Conservative Party researchers demonstrated, the five-year lead-in also coincided with a notable uptick in file destruction by Whitehall departments, with some civil service branches essentially doubling their […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 92 (2026) FREE

[PDF file]: […] of the Ukrainian farright.3 Looking at Skidelsky’s Wikipedia entry,4 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 […]

Chris Hani book copy

Lobster Issue

[…] over the past 30 years or so.3 He quotes a South African report from 1991 describing it as ‘an informal forum of influential representatives of a ” conservative cast of mind”’ – which is what Pinay/Le Cercle was and remains. Among recent British participants are former Conservative MPs Norman Lamont, Rory Stewart and Jonathan […]

Mark Lewis and ‘the ultimate hacker’

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012) FREE

[PDF file]: […] civil servant, Mrs Pat Middleton, but ruled in 2008 that her complaint about telephone tapping lay outside their jurisdiction. Mrs Middleton, 61, former treasurer of a Manchester Conservative club, has now discovered that the private investigator had previously worked for the News of the World and had just served a prison sentence. After seeing […]

Lob86ViewfromBridgepdf

Lobster Issue

[…] Review of Books: ‘Real-term wages in Britain today are no higher than they were in 2005. Since the global financial crisis of 2008, a succession of mostly Conservative politicians has sought to assure the British people that once the difficult bit (first austerity, then Brexit, then Covid) is behind us, the good times will […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] or dismiss the majority of its board — was Morgan McSweeney . . . McSweeney was also a director of Labour Together, a group formed as a conservative counterweight to the rise of Corbyn. As the Canary pointed out both the CCDH and Labour Together share the same address. McSweeney has now been appointed […]

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