[…] 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 […]
[…] Peter Watson, David Lee, John Burnes and Harry Irwin for information, material and advice. Correction In footnote 1 on page 28 of Lobster 35 I referred to Labour MP Tony Lloyd as a ‘moderniser’. My apologies to Mr Lloyd: I confused him with Tony Wright. Donations Thanks to Carol Smith for a donation of […]
[…] politics, but rather toward scholarly and long-term ideological endeavour. Moreover, while we are happy to speak to and, we hope, influence Conservative groups, we speak to the Labour Party, trade unions or anyone open to some aspect of the libertarian position. The radicalism of our civil libertarian position on immigration, victimless crimes, sexual freedom […]
[…] of what we might call the politics of intelligence in the 1990s, from the creation of the Intelligence and Security Committee through to the collapse of the Labour Party: from feisty words and talk of action in opposition to the forelock-tugging we now see. The authors point out that, while Shayler was sitting in […]
[…] His marriage to Lord Curzon’s daughter, Cimmie, consolidated his position within the country’s governing elite. Impatience for preferment led to his defection from the Conservatives to the Labour Party where he was welcomed with open arms. Both he and his wife became Labour MPs and in 1929 he became a junior minister in the […]
[…] on Northern Ireland. To get it on the air you have to get it past Ware. Comment? I wouldn’t dare. Enemies of Democracy? ‘The debate within the Labour right on how to handle the “left-wing problem” was often heated, indeed acrimonious… Many discussions took place “across the floor”. They normally came to nothing, Yet, […]
Gregory Palast is the journalist who broke the ‘cash for access’ story in The Observer. Here is the text of a letter he wrote on August 18 1999 to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, the Neill Committee, by way of a preface and request to give oral evidence to that committee. My recommendations […]
[…] become regarded as both a spokesman for youth and a great British entrepreneur Branson was duly courted by various UK politicians. The Tories liked him; later New Labour liked him, too. His astutely managed PR battles with British Airways made some think that Branson could (and would) provide cut price air travel. This never […]
[…] prospective candidates were insufficiently robust on this issue. The Goldsmith effect By 1995 it seemed clear to many observers of UK politics that Tony Blair and the Labour Party, now packaged as the ‘New Labour project’, were likely to do very well at the forthcoming general election. For a range of reasons, notably the […]
[…] to the gigantic, going on in every industrialised society. Political parties always contain conspiracies at every level. As I was writing this it was announced that the Labour Party is going to examine the influence of an entryist Trotskyist group called Socialist Action, previously Socialist Organiser (known to some Trot watchers as the ‘Soggy […]
