New Labour, new fascism?

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] indeed, even the Mosley of the 1930 Manifesto or the New party. The majority of the Blair quotes date from after 1990; approximately half since he became Labour leader. I have left each quote unidentified except by a number. The reader may thus speculate on who said or wrote what. (Readers seeking clues should […]

The getting elected project

Book review
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] of this and bought it for about $30 and it isn’t worth the money. This is a detailed account of some of the intellectual processes behind ‘New Labour’, focusing on IPPR and Demos in particular. The author has read the documents, articles and pamphlets produced by the little group of intellectuals who paved the […]

UDA: Inside the heart of Loyalist terror

Book cover
Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] door.()At least McDonald and Cusack acknowledge that there was sectarian violence on both sides and that the failure of the Civil Rights movement to root itself in labour politics – and distance itself from Republican goals – enabled a self-serving rabble-rouser like Ian Paisley to contribute to the biggest example of self-fulfilling prophecy in […]

Historical Notes

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] in the essential services, and were linked to rumours that elements in the military and intelligence establishment were contemplating some kind of coup to overthrow the minority Labour government which had taken up office in March 1974. This view was expressed at the time by Tony Benn (2) and supported by the later publications […]

Contamination, the Labour Party, nationalism and the Blairites

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997)

[PDF file]: *reformatted early 2026* Contamination, the Labour Party, nationalism and the Blairites Robin Ramsay In footnote 6 in his essay on the Bilderberg group in Lobster 32, Mike Peters noted that the US Left had lost interest in the study of the power elite because the subject had become ‘contaminated’ by the interest in it […]

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

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund London: The Bodley Head, 2025, £25, h/b Colin Challen One of the earlier books seeking to answer the questions of who and what Keir Starmer is and represents was Oliver Eagleton’s The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right (Verso, […]

Labour Takes Power: The Denis MacShane Diaries

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: Rehabilitating the jailbird? Labour Takes Power: The Denis MacShane Diaries 1997-2001 Denis MacShane London: Biteback Publishing, 2023, £25, h/b In his Preface to this volume, MacShane hopes that ‘it may be of interest to anyone who wants to know how politics works and to Labour MPs who have the honour of being asked to […]

Books on New Labour

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010)

[PDF file]: […] Brown? How the dream job turned sour Edited by Colin Hughes London: The Guardian, 2010, £8.99 The End of the Party: The Rise and Fall of New Labour Andrew Rawnsley London: Penguin/Viking, 2010, £25.00 Ghost Dancers David John Douglass Hastings: Christie Books, 2010, £12.95 The Silent State: Secrets, Surveillance and the Myth of British […]

More views from the bridge

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] I have no way of knowing how many of these existed before Blunkett became Home Secretary; nor, indeed, how many of these preceded the arrival of the Labour government in 1997. But if he didn’t create them, Blunkett hasn’t scrapped them and it is hard to disagree with Jenkins’ comment: ‘This is bureaucracy gone […]

The Westminster Whistleblowers

Book cover
Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

[…] Whistleblowers: Shirley Porter, homes for votes and twenty years of scandal in Britain’s rottenest borough Paul Dimoldenberg London: Politicos, 2006, £12.99, p/b   The author was a Labour councillor in Westminster during Porter’s ‘reign of terror’ and was instrumental in eventually bringing her down. With an insider’s view he has written an immensely detailed […]

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