The Mandelson legacy

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] to resign from No 10 and become special envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, Mandelson had mended some of his broken fences with successor Gordon Brown. He returned from Brussels to join Brown’s Labour Cabinet as the unelected Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool. But he was already working hard for his […]

Whole World In An Uproar: Music, Rebellion and Repression 1955-1972

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] chronicles much more of the soundtrack of the resistance, but he also pays attention to the rival soundtrack, to the singers who supported the Vietnam War. James Brown, for example, was enthusiastic about entertaining the troops in Vietnam. Although the authorities were very reluctant to let him do so, in June 1968 the tour […]

The Dungavel Handicap Scotland, Churchill and Rudolf Hess, 1941

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021)

[PDF file]: […] Halifax, Foreign Secretary; Reginald Dorman-Smith, Minister of Agriculture; David Margesson, Secretary of State for War; Lord Simon, Lord Chancellor; Sir Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Ernest Brown, Minister of Labour; William Morrison, Postmaster-General; and Lord Caldecote, Lord Chancellor.3 Among those not explicitly branded as guilty, but still retained, was Lord Reith, known for […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] took office in 1974. That narrative says that Labour politicians don’t understand the economy and can’t be trusted with it. This narrative had such power over Gordon Brown and Tony Blair that they spent the period in opposition from 199497 endlessly endorsing it and promising not to challenge its perceived prescriptions. When he was […]

The economic crisis

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[PDF file]: […] the world does not include political approval or disapproval. NuLab didn’t understand this. Their initial posture towards the City was fear mixed with buttkissing. As chancellor, Gordon Brown may have famously not worn the expected dinner suit for his address at the annual meeting of the City bigwigs, but as his central policy that […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] $2.07 at its peak in 2007). A strong pound is bad for the British manufacturing economy, making exports expensive and competing imports cheap. But Blair (and Chancellor Brown) didn’t care about manufacturing – or simply didn’t understand the impact the value of sterling had on it – or both. After all, we had the […]

Off Message, and, Standing for Something

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] origin of New Labour is to be found in the historic defeats that the Thatcher government inflicted on the labour movement in the 1980s. Without these defeats, Brown would have remained on the left and Blair would never have become party leader. Marshall-Andrews’ own particular concerns are with New Labour’s colonial wars and its […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] $2.07 at its peak in 2007). A strong pound is bad for the British manufacturing economy, making exports expensive and competing imports cheap. But Blair (and Chancellor Brown) didn’t care about manufacturing – or simply didn’t understand the impact the value of sterling had on it – or both. After all, we had the […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] depressing? That he really believed ‘the rising tide lifts all boats’ story before, or that he didn’t but was unwilling to say so until now? When Gordon Brown dips into the bullshit basket he calls for some global action which he knows will never take place but which he thinks sounds impressive. His latest […]

Who pays the piper? Funding the Labour Party

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: Who pays the piper? Funding the Labour Party Colin Challen When Jeremy Corbyn vacated the leadership of the Labour Party – even after a bruising general election in 2019 – the party was left with around £13 million in the kitty. In the years that followed that balance was gradually whittled away, until the party […]

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