View from

Lobster Issue

[…] needs a philosophy, a set of principles, an ideology. Indeed Starmer’s need is greater than Major’s was. A Conservative administration benefits from a sense of purpose; a Labour government cannot survive without one. Progressive politics needs a galvanising, uniting, liberating, crusading temper – the arc of history may be long, or 3 4 5 […]

In The Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] I actually think it’s corrupt’. He writes of how ‘the Board of Deputies of British Jews had an open webcast with their Chairman Jonathan Arkush, in which Labour MP Louise Ellman says I must not be an FCO minister’. This was before his appointment was even announced. What was taking place was ‘the most […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] needs a philosophy, a set of principles, an ideology. Indeed Starmer’s need is greater than Major’s was. A Conservative administration benefits from a sense of purpose; a Labour government cannot survive without one. Progressive politics needs a galvanising, or 3 4 5 2 uniting, liberating, crusading temper – the arc of history may be […]

The Dungavel Handicap Scotland, Churchill and Rudolf Hess, 1941

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021)

[PDF file]: […] quickly, it appears to be the massed ranks of Parliament rallying behind the new Prime Minister. A closer inspection shows that Churchill’s main supporters are from the Labour Party, with all the prominent Conservatives being in the second or third rows, if they are identifiable at all. The UK opposition Some of the surgery […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011)

[PDF file]: […] the Guardian (19 March 2011), ‘Thatcher papers reveal how she stoked rightwing rebellion in war against “wets”’, notes that Thatcher’s private secretary, Ian Gow MP, met with Labour MP Neville Sandelson, six months before Sandelson joined the SDP when it went public. Gow’s report includes this paragraph: ‘Sandelson says that his remaining political purpose […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010)

[PDF file]: […] Wilson. The Times sections are italicised A KGB plot One conjecture connects Harold Wilson to the sudden death of Hugh Gaitskell, his predecessor as leader of the Labour Party. It claims that Gaitskell, a pro-American, had been assassinated by the KGB in order to install a communist sympathiser as probable future prime minister. Anatoly […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013)

[PDF file]: […] 1987, Jordan and Aaronovitch crossed the Thames with him, leaving their old friend Peter Mandelson, now Lord Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool, in south London as the Labour Party’s director of communications. Aaronovitch, after executive positions at the BBC, left to become a columnist in turn for The Independent, The Guardian and now The […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] these paragraphs: Excessively high interest rates maintained by the Bank of England following independence in 1997 were blamed, largely accurately, for further waves of deindustrialisation under New Labour. The pound was held at a value that made manufacturing exports uncompetitive: 1.5 million manufacturing jobs went, largely ignored at the time, between 1997 and 2009. […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] these paragraphs: Excessively high interest rates maintained by the Bank of England following independence in 1997 were blamed, largely accurately, for further waves of deindustrialisation under New Labour. The pound was held at a value that made manufacturing exports uncompetitive: 1.5 million manufacturing jobs went, largely ignored at the time, between 1997 and 2009. […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] these paragraphs: Excessively high interest rates maintained by the Bank of England following independence in 1997 were blamed, largely accurately, for further waves of deindustrialisation under New Labour. The pound was held at a value that made manufacturing exports uncompetitive: 1.5 million manufacturing jobs went, largely ignored at the time, between 1997 and 2009. […]

Accessibility Toolbar