View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] was the result of the SDP’s formation: they received 25% of the votes cast, most of which came from people who were previously Labour voters. The Conservative vote stayed much as it had been in 1979. There was a ‘Falklands bounce’ for the Conservatives in the 1983 election but recent analysis suggests that this […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 62 (Winter 2011) FREE
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The Brexit impasse

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] By 2015, however, its strength was also growing at the national level. In that year’s General Election it secured 3.8 million votes (12.6 per cent of the vote) and replaced the Liberal Democrats as Britain’s third party. Despite the UKIP success, the Tories did win a majority in 2015. The 2017 General Election result, […]

Historical Notes on Tom Nairn and the British State

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] were met, with the exception of annual Parliaments, the process took decades. It was not until 1914 that all males over 21 won 4 the right to vote in general elections. This process of painstaking gradual reform over the best part of seven decades, also visible in the recognition of trade union rights, ensured […]

Wilson, MI5 and the rise of Thatcher

Lobster Issue 11 (April 1986) £££
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[PDF file]: […] would be that the “unknown subscriber” was the British tax-payer. We think Stewart-Smith was being funded in these ventures by MI5, probably using money from “the secret vote’.) The anti-Liberal pamphlet was distributed in seats where the Liberals were thought likely to do well. (21) Among the themes being promoted by MI5 against the […]

Brexit Revisited: Europe Didn’t Work, and, Brexit Unfolded

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] EU in practice are dismal. This has actually swayed voters in various parts of the EU to reject steps for ever greater unity and integration and to vote for a narrow nationalistic set of parties to represent their interests. Economic growth has been limp in comparison with other parts of the globe. More of […]

Code of Conduct: Why We Need to Fix Parliament – and How to Do It by Chris Bryant

Lobster Issue 87 (2023) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] And he quotes a Tory MP complaining ‘of people going through the division lobbies reeking of booze She added that she has seen colleagues miss votes or vote the wrong way because of alcohol’. The situation today, however, is far better than it used to be, but even so he has seen ‘Older male […]

Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] he got a fellow Catholic, Steve Webb (Lib Dem), as Pensions Minister during the Coalition. In 2013 Mr Webb boldly announced that the Good Lord himself would vote Lib Dem,9 although as it turned out practically no other bugger would. He was supported in this extravagant claim by the party president at the time, […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] do. The formation of the SDP ensured that Mrs Thatcher won the 1983 election: forming a new centre-left party in 1981 was bound to split the anti-Conservative vote at the general election which followed. The question is: was it formed with that purpose in mind? On this the evidence is mixed. Three of the […]

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