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 […]

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 miners and the secret state

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010) FREE

[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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013) FREE

[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 […]

Hope & Despair: Lifting the lid on the murky world of Scottish politics by Neil Findlay and But What Can I Do?: Why politics has gone so wrong, and how you can help fix it by Alastair Campbell

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

[PDF file]: […] If the current line is held to the election, the ducking and diving of Labour will become as big a turn-off as the deceit and dissembling of Conservative ministers.’ 2 He promptly backed the election of Tony Blair as Labour leader and left journalism to work for him as spokesman on a salary we […]

South of the border

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the Labour Party – at least during the idyllic, pre-war criminal days. Blair was seen as a soft-right (within Labour) and Stewart espouses many soft-left (for a Conservative) ideas. Many within his own party would probably see Rory Stewart as a neater fit within Labour, just as many within Labour saw Blair’s more natural […]

The Clandestine Caucus: a minor update

Lobster Issue 88 (2024) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the source of the organisation’s funding. It reported that ‘a great many dollars are coming from America’ or, put more simply, ‘there are Yankee dollars behind it’. Conservative sources reported that this US-funded British pressure group intended ‘to spend a considerable number of dollars over the years in this country with the purpose of […]

View from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] of the mid 1970s – control the money supply and you can control inflation – appealed because it was so simple. It took hold, particularly in the Conservative Party, where what became the Thatcherites adopted it and wrecked the British manufacturing economy with it between 1980 and 1984. Margaret Thatcher was a politician who […]

Accessibility Toolbar