[…] the figures were: 1978 -72 1987 -164 This doubling over the period of the Thatcher years is very interesting. For while the South and Midlands has voted Tory, Scotland has been moving leftwards throughout the Thatcher period – the Tories now have only slightly more than 10% of the Parliamentary seats in Scotland. And […]
[…] Routledge. ‘This is not the same thing.’ Of course I asked the wrong question. What I should have asked was: does Gordon Brown understand British economic his tory? Or: does he understand economic politics? In any case, I would have been asking a question to which I knew the answer. Brown knows little of […]
[…] that respect’ (May 5th, 1993). It seems reasonable, ten years on, to add a footnote for the historians and, for others, a bit of analysis. The s tory is that Simon Haskel (later Lord Haskel), then Chair of the Labour Finance & Industry Group (LFIG), asked me to help out Geoff Mulgan. I had […]
[…] sharp pen-pictures of the politicians who have dominated the period. The author is one of the first historians to acknowledge the parapolitical dimension in modern British his tory, from the formation of the Special Branch to the construction of the new MI6 headquarters over a century later. This is allied to a perception that […]
[…] at his side, toured the City’s dining rooms announcing Labour’s conversion to economic orthodoxy – the most complete and protracted act of political surrender in British his tory this century. Further, while John Smith was spurning the skills of Mr Mandelson and wooing the money-lenders he was a member of the Steering Committee of […]
[…] decades of corruption and bribery at the very heart of Italian politics. Tony Blair came to power promising to be ‘whiter than white’ after the decade of Tory sleaze and corruption culminating in the Scott Report into the arms for Iraq scandal. The idea of being a cleansing force in politics was central to […]
[…] helped organise a party at the British embassy in Washington to honour the BAP – the Project newsletter reporting the event called the New Labour election vic tory the ‘Big Swing to the BAP’ – Wolfowitz was one of the guest speakers. Naughtie’s opposite number on the US advisory board is now deputy to […]
[…] Minister. An internal security regime is being bureaucratically pre-fixed for a new Prime Minister. This means that it is going to be hard to unravel by any Tory successor. It is an approach that caps a wider shift to intelligence-based policing in which the subjects of the intelligence-gathering are ourselves, our dissidents and our […]
[…] mainly on the paraphernalia, research and minutiae of a big libel trial leaving in their wake more loose ends than a Gordian knot. Aitken had a classic Tory background. Eton/Oxford, inherited Beaverbrook wealth, writing speeches for Selwyn Lloyd (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) at 19 etc. He was also a libertarian, calling for drugs […]
[…] a tactic emerged ‘when several of us went to the Home Office weeks before the strike began’ (Sunday Times November 25) Met. police on picket duty used Tory Party clubs as temporary police stations. (letter in Leveller Supplement No 2, December 1984) (b) and public order Met. Police ‘exceeded their powers’ in arresting people […]
