View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] things are now so bad even Purves was moved to write that the privatisation of public services has been a disaster5 – something the current leaders of Labour Party dare not say – even if they think it; and there is no evidence that they do. There isn’t anything too complex here. Everything done […]

Johnson at 10: The Inside Story

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] in 1992 ‘with a smaller electorate’; and that Labour’s defeat was down more to their voters either voting LibDem or abstaining than defecting to the Tories. The Labour vote fell by 2.6 million. The conclusion they draw from this is that Johnson’s popularity was exaggerated. (p. 137) What they do not do is adequately […]

The British state’s failed attempt to kill off the Freedom of Information Act

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] granted. Delays set in almost immediately. The tentative consultation signalled by the White Paper Your Right to Know didn’t begin until December 1997, some seven months after Labour had formed its first government since 1979.2 Three years later, the Lord Chancellor’s department proposed that the new legislation should be phased in with delays between […]

lob61-parish-notes

Lobster Issue

[…] which they weren’t in the mid 1980s. (I just googled ‘MI5’ and got 2.8 million hits.) Secondly, when Lobster began in 1983 I had just joined the Labour Party, and the events of the 1960s and 70s, which led to the disaster of Thatcher, were still fresh in the collective party memory. The pursuit […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] might inhibit short-selling and reducing disproportionate costs for firms. (Emphasis added.) Shorting is gambling on future share prices. Far from encouraging it, you might think that a Labour government would simply ban it. But hey, if the gambling is made easier, we’ll get more of it in London. Economic growth! The writer with no […]

The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View by Ellen Meiksins Wood

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] done by propertyless labourers who are obliged to sell their labour-power in exchange for a wage in order to gain access to the means of life and labour itself. In the process of supplying the needs and wants of society, workers are at the same time and inseparably creating profit for those who buy […]

The long goodbye? Taking on the consultants

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] between 2018-19 and 2021-22, the Financial Times previously reported.1 The paragraph above was in a Financial Times report from January 2024. It followed the news that the Labour Party was taking unprecedented levels of support in kind from consulting firms like EY UK and the other members of the ‘big four’ consultancies. The same […]

Consultants Challen

Lobster Issue

[…] between 2018-19 and 2021-22, the Financial Times previously reported.1 The paragraph above was in a Financial Times report from January 2024. It followed the news that the Labour Party was taking unprecedented levels of support in kind from consulting firms like EY UK and the other members of the ‘big four’ consultancies. The same […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] or Majoritarian Pluralism.’1 4 I noticed a report on this on 30 March, the first official day of the general election campaign here, which was begun by Labour leader Ed Miliband making nice in the City of London, promising not to increase their taxes and, centrally, to keep UK corporation tax the lowest in […]

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