South of the border

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] contest Rory Stewart has, quite wisely, sat on his hands and let our current PM make a predictable hash of things. I am distinctly reminded of Tony Blair and his position in the Labour Party – at least during the idyllic, pre-war criminal days. Blair was seen as a soft-right (within Labour) and Stewart […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] service of the British people, rather than dictating to them. Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism. Tony Blair reimagined a stale, outdated Labour Party into one that could seize the optimism of the late 90s. A century ago, Clement Attlee wrote that Labour must […]

Not the Chilcot Report by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016) FREE

[PDF file]: […] is well written and burns with hot logic. His criticism, from careful examination of the material available to Chilcot, is not only directed at Prime Minister Tony Blair. He concludes: ‘I have found no evidence that David Manning, foreign policy adviser inside Downing Street as war loomed, ever tried to correct Tony Blair. Neither […]

The long goodbye? Taking on the consultants

Lobster Issue 90 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] in highly technical areas of public services, such as environmental monitoring, finance and digital technologies. This became apparent in the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the Blair/ Brown years, during the period of the Coalition government’s policy to slash spending on consultants. In one instance, a major rail franchise tender was withdrawn because […]

Consultants Challen

Lobster Issue

[…] in highly technical areas of public services, such as environmental monitoring, finance and digital technologies. This became apparent in the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the Blair/ Brown years, during the period of the Coalition government’s policy to slash spending on consultants. In one instance, a major rail franchise tender was withdrawn because […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the time of the crash: the market is magic, we need no regulation of the City and the domestic manufacturing economy can be ignored. Messrs Brown and Blair had persuaded themselves in the early 1990s that it was necessary to follow the neo-con (and Conservative Party) line on economic policy to get elected because […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] a striking example in relation to the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. He asked Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s Director of Communications at the time, if Tony Blair could change his mind about the decision to invade. Campbell replied: Think about what it would mean if he admitted he was wrong. It would overshadow […]

Hack Attack: How The Truth Caught Up With Rupert Murdoch by Nick Davies

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] to do to get Murdoch to change sides. As Davies points out, since 1979, ‘no British government has been elected without the support of Rupert Murdoch….Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown have consistently cleared their diaries and welcomed him to the inner sanctum of their governments (and then disclosed as little as possible of what […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] See for example Not that this makes a change from NuLab. See James Chapman, ‘Meet Labour’s City cronies: The roll call of bankers rewarded by Brown and Blair’, The Daily Mail 12 February 2009. 9 These are detailed in James Lyons, ‘NHS reform leaves Tory backers with links to private healthcare firms set for […]

Accessibility Toolbar