Books on New Labour

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] also writes well: ‘What ended in the slump of 2008-9 was a decade of increasingly frenzied profit-taking in a metropolitan financial sector run out of control. The Conservative political elite had migrated to it as dealers, executives and corporate lawyers, and no longer supported the elite plus middle-class “public servant” consensus Schumpeter had praised […]

Misc reviews

Lobster Issue

[…] wanted the author to make a judgement: this one, although denied, looks true. He never does. So we finish as we began: Opus Dei, officially, is a conservative, proselytising sect within the Catholic Church. Its critics, including some former members, say it is also a conspiracy; that while there is a public front, a […]

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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 […]

Misleading Parliament – a case to answer

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

See also: Misleading Parliament – Appendices

[PDF file]: […] to cover up abuses of power? 19 Having read this document, it is important to bear in mind the following comment made by Margaret Thatcher at the Conservative Party Conference, Winter Gardens, Blackpool, 10 October 1975, only eight months after I was moved out of Northern Ireland. The first duty of Government is to […]

Is there a ‘political class’?

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011) FREE

[PDF file]: Is there a ‘political class’? Scott Newton It has become fashionable to argue that Britain is in the grip of its own ‘political class’. Most recently the idea has been promulgated by Peter Oborne, in his 2007 book, The Triumph of the Political Class. I have been sceptical about this, remembering the dominance of Oxbridge-educated […]

Holding Pattern

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] in other nations when Theresa 45 46 47 Another little mystery might be explained by an MI6 link. Fresh out of Oxford University, young Dave’s entrance to Conservative Central Office was smoothed by a phone call from someone at Buckingham Palace, who told the startled recipient: ‘I understand you are to see David Cameron. […]

The Richer, The Poorer, by Stewart Lansley

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

[PDF file]: […] pro-inequality model of political economy, dysfunctional as it has been, proved remarkably resilient.’ How and why has this happened in the 21st century under Labour, Coalition and Conservative governments? Lansley says the key explanation for Britain’s high poverty rate lies in profound economic and social shifts. These include the speed of industrial change, the […]

When the Lights Went Out by Andy Beckett and Strange Days Indeed by Francis Wheen

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] twenties’, ‘swinging sixties’ – irritates serious historians; but in the case of the 1970s it does make a a kind of sense, the decade being bookended by Conservative Party election victories in 1970 and 1979, heralding a return to the market: the half-hearted version under Heath, ‘Selsdon man’, and then the real thing with […]

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