Knife Fights: A Memoir of Modern War in Theory and Practice by John A Nagl

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] the Army Chief of Staff, General Schoomaker, who, in turn, gave a copy to the new US commander in Iraq, General Casey. By 2009, even the then Labour Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, a man for whom mediocrity was merely an aspiration, admitted that he was reading the book. More importantly, Nagl became one of […]

Is there a ‘political class’?

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011)

[PDF file]: […] been deriding only a few days, let alone weeks, earlier. In a way their experience was a more vivid, concentrated and dramatic version of what happened to Labour after Neil Kinnock embraced the liberal rather than the social-democratic path to ‘modernisation’ after 1987. Maybe the result of the 1979 election was the watershed here […]

Pegasus: The Story of the World’s Most Dangerous Spyware

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] cyber technology. The big question remains: how much, if any, of this technology has a back door? Has the insatiable thirst for intel – on friend and foe alike – been catered for? Colin Challen is a former Labour MP and blogs at www.colinchallen.org. ‘Peer Group Pressure’, in Lobster 78 at or . 9 8

Unredacted: Russia, Trump and the Fight for Democracy by Christopher Steele

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] Steele emphasises the Putin regime’s commitment to supporting authoritarianism and encouraging division throughout the West. As for his own political trajectory, he had supported Blair and New Labour, voting for them in 1997 and 2001, but was opposed to the Iraq War. Indeed, the invasion was one of the factors that pushed ‘me away […]

Collapse of stout party: Eden, Suez and America

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] started – as a major mistake. Lennox-Boyd, in turn, was a close political ally of Churchill. In another twist Ann Fleming was also having an affair with Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell (whom Eden personally disliked). Fleming’s property in Jamaica was not particularly well appointed and was somewhat isolated. During Eden’s stay at the […]

Iraq and intelligence

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013)

[PDF file]: […] When I became interested in the relationship between the intelligence and security services and the British political system in the late 1970s, it was believed on the Labour left that the intelligence and security services were allpowerful and unaccountable. They are still unaccountable in any real sense (their accountability to Parliament is notional) but […]

Climate hysterics: useful idiots or just idiots

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019)

[PDF file]: […] Is it a coincidence that marginalism11 in economics and progressivism (in civilian and military forms) emerged as management ideologies at the same time slavery was abolished and labour unions were becoming a serious threat to the order of things? Another colloquial abuse is the term ‘Marshall Plan’. Generally this term is loaded with positive […]

Thatcher versus the City of London

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] and was one of the causes of the inflation of the 1970s (which reached 25% in 1975). That inflation became a stick with which the Tories beat Labour and unions in the 1974-79 period and beyond, 98 Winter 2010 and a section of the Tory right beat the Heathites. Mrs Thatcher and her faction […]

The Richer, The Poorer, by Stewart Lansley

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] Lansley: ‘Instead, the 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 […]

TO CATCH A SPY: How the Spycatcher Affair Brought MI5 in from the Cold by Tim Tate

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] on the Hollis matter in March 1981 was a lie. In those days lying to the Commons might have been a resigning issue. But since the leading Labour politicians of the time were afraid to go near any security issues, the Thatcher-Armstrong strategy wasn’t necessary. There is a wonderful German word, verschlimmbesserung, which means […]

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