Apocryphilia

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] in all parts of the UK, the geographical distribution of seats was replicated at local government level with cities like Cardiff, Leeds and Liverpool being run by Conservative councils. The key political figures in this arrangement, and the first group of ministers from whom HRH took advice, were Sir Winston Churchill (Prime Minister, and […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 87 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] 38 OECD countries in terms of the tax-toGDP’.12 Looking further back, the figures show that, with the discovery of North Sea oil and the dominance of the Conservative Party in the 80s and 90s, the UK ‘burden’ fell. Between 1981 and 1995, the UK tax burden fell from a high of 33.9 per cent […]

Sex scandals and sexual blackmail in America’s deep politics

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017)

[PDF file]: […] (Marla Maples) pregnant while still married to his first wife (Ivana Trump), and bragged of having ‘three other girlfriends’ while ‘living with Marla’.1 Despite this record, many conservative evangelical leaders and other champions of ‘family values’ supported his candidacy against former Senator Hillary Clinton.2 Trump appears to be surviving even apparently calculated leaks by […]

Britain alone The Path from Suez to Brexit by Philip Stephens

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021)

[PDF file]: […] of all things Brexit, until one realizes that their Governors include Michael Gove, Lord Johnson of Marylebone (brother of the PM), Lord Chadlington (President of the Witney Conservative association) and Lord Maude. They are certainly doing their bit for impartiality. As for his book, well . . . it’s all here: a perfectly fair […]

Decades of Deceit: the Stalker Affair and its Legacy

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] British establishment. First, on 30 March 1979, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) managed to place a car bomb within the precincts of the Houses of Parliament. Conservative MP Airey Neave, a key figure in the rise of Thatcher within the Conservative Party, died as a result of the blast.1 Less than six months […]

What if…

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] ready to tear up the roots just as things are getting better and trust your nation’s destiny to this extraordinary woman? Hardly a socialist question. Indeed, a conservative one. But it works. No, the nation rather comfortably replies, on the whole, we ain’t. It was a victory for consensus politics and the British way, […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] inflame tensions between City and Europe’. Reading (just) between the lines of his speech it is obvious that Boris is offering himself as the leader of the Conservative Party who will take the UK out of the EU to preserve the City of London as the financial crime centre of the world economy. Footnotes-R-us […]

Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England by Sebastian Payne

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England Sebastian Payne London: Macmillan, 2021, £21, h/b John Booth Whether Boris Johnson gets bored with No 10 or nervy Conservative Party funders push him out of the door, the author of Broken Heartlands finds little to comfort those hoping to see Sir Keir Starmer in Downing […]

Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] (except, for me, those on cricket) are worth reading. What is also of interest is that Oborne is, as he himself tells us, very much ‘a traditional Conservative’. This was in the August 2025 issue of Byline Times, in the same column in which he actually goes on to strongly oppose the removal of […]

Newsinger Bryant copy

Lobster Issue

[…] than others’. Bryant provides some examples: ‘Meller Designs, which was co-owned by David Meller, who had backed Michael Gove’s bid for leader and donated £60,000 to the Conservative Party, was referred by Gove and won £164 million in Covid contracts’.5 There was Greg Hands who ‘passed on a recommendation . . . which led […]

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