Johnson at 10: The Inside Story

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] 1992 ‘with a smaller electorate’; and that Labour’s defeat was down more to their voters either voting LibDem or abstaining than defecting to the Tories. The Labour vote fell by 2.6 million. The conclusion they draw from this is that Johnson’s popularity was exaggerated. (p. 137) What they do not do is adequately consider […]

Collapse of stout party: Eden, Suez and America

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] In the US voting was taking place in the presidential elections at precisely that moment and, although the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket breezed home with 57% of the popular vote, the US had insisted on an immediate ceasefire. It’s never been really clear why the UK and France didn’t invade at the same time that their […]

Climbing the Bookshelves

Lobster Issue

[…] the female member of the Gang of Four, I wondered? Who could possibly quibble with that reasonable-sounding voice when the Foreign Secretary appears barely old enough to vote? But then I read Climbing the Bookshelves by the former Labour Cabinet minister who helped launch the short-lived SDP in 1981. Sure enough the wise words […]

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

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] bang up to date. Many of us older hands in politics may struggle to keep up to speed with the latest techniques employed to convince people to vote; but many voters are, in my opinion, being persuaded to vote against their own best interests. The use of the internet to penetrate and cater for […]

Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] of just over 33% of votes cast, with ‘fringe’ parties and independents making headway. Get In tells how victory was achieved by maximising the efficiency of the vote, delivering it where it was needed rather than piling it up where it would make no difference. Social media played its part, micro-targeting individual voters rather […]

Falling Down: The Conservative Party and the Decline of Tory Britain by Phil Burton-Cartledge

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] 71 of the 104 years since 1918. Although it suffered shattering defeats at the polls in 1997 and 2001, it has made a triumphant comeback, increasing its vote in 2005 and at every subsequent General Election. It returned to office in 2010 as senior partner in the Conservative-Liberal Democrat administration and since 2015 has […]

Accessibility Toolbar