The State of Secrecy: Spies and the Media in Britain by Richard Norton-Taylor

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] reoccurs elsewhere in the book. We’re told that, during the Cold War, leaks from heroic defectors and double agents helped preserve peace. For instance, they helped convince Thatcher that Mikhail Gorbachev was serious about reforming the Soviet Union. Norton-Taylor also gives honourable mentions to politicians like Robin Cook, Tam Dalyell and Menzies Campbell for […]

Inside the Trump Administration

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: Inside the Trump Administration Revolution: Trump, Washington and ‘We The People’ K T McFarland New York: Post Hill Press, 2020 In Trump Time: A Journal of America’s Plague Year Peter Navarro St Petersburg, Florida: All Seasons Press, 2021 The Chief’s Chief Mark Meadows St Petersburg, Florida: All Seasons Press, 2021 I’ll Take Your Questions Now: […]

Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] I acquired Atkinson’s obscure booklet from eBay. The first is the following assertion (p. 14): ‘Because Fleet Street expressed pre-Falklands doubts 3 7 as to whether Margaret Thatcher could deliver a second Tory Government, the possibility of a new pro-European Democratic Alliance was explored immediately following Labour’s defeat in 1979 – indeed talks did […]

Haters, Baiters and Would-be Dictators: Anti-Semitism and UK Far Right by Nick Toczek

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: Haters, Baiters and Would-be Dictators Anti-Semitism and UK Far Right Nick Toczek London: Routledge, 2016; £24.99, p/b This is a very detailed account of the British anti-semites of the first half of the twentieth century, the hard-core handful who believed that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion really was a blueprint for Jewish domination […]

Political life in Britain

Lobster Issue

Contents Political life in Britain Talking to a Brick Wall: How New Labour stopped listening to the voter and why we need a new politics Deborah Mattinson London: Biteback, 2010, £17.99 People, Politics and Pressure Groups: Memoirs of a lobbyist Arthur Butler Hove: Picnic Publishing, £12.99, 2010 Bonfire of the Liberties: New Labour, Human Rights […]

View from Lob 73

Lobster Issue

[…] listen to polls and focus groups for their professed views, I find myself unable to suppress the thought: I wonder what they are really thinking? Take Margaret Thatcher: what did she really think she was doing when she fronted the creation of the grossly unequal society we now have? Frank Field MP gave us […]

A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey by Jim Sillars

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022) FREE

[PDF file]: A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey Jim Sillars Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2021, £14.99 John Booth There aren’t many people still active in British politics who served in the Royal Navy when sailors were given 200 free cigarettes a month.1 But Jim Sillars is one of them and has lived to reflect thoughtfully on the 65 […]

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]: Hope & Despair: Lifting the lid on the murky world of Scottish politics Neil Findlay Edinburgh: Lulath Press, £14.99 But What Can I Do?: Why politics has gone so wrong, and how you can help fix it Alastair Campbell London: Hutchinson Heinemann, £22.00 John Booth Here we have two approaches to politics and public life […]

All In It Together: England in the early 21st Century by Alwyn Turner

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] London: Profile Books, 2021, £20, h/b Dan Atkinson On March 20 1976, in the immediate wake of Harold Wilson’s resignation as Prime Minister and Labour leader, Margaret Thatcher told the Conservative Central Council about ‘a little piece of advice’ she had given him the previous week. ‘Go’ I said, ‘and go now’. ‘It’s always […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] the bridge Robin Ramsay The right madness I was flipping through Richard Cockett’s Thinking the Unthinkable (Fontana, 1995) about the influence of the ‘think tanks’ on the Thatcher revolution, and noticed a quote from a 1968 Fabian pamphlet on the then politically insignificant ‘New Right’ – essentially the Institute for Economic Affairs – and […]

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