[PDF file]: […] turned on Cameron’s government with a vengeance. On 25 March the Sunday Times broke the ‘cash for access’ story with accompanying video, forcing the resignation of the Conservative Party’s cotreasurer, the appropriately named Peter Cruddas. This was accompanied by a systematic savaging of George Osborne’s budget in the Sun. It was condemned as a […]
[PDF file]: The Never Trumpers Never Trump: The Revolt of the Conservative Elites Robert P Saldin and Steven M Teles Oxford University Press, 2020, £21.99 (h/b) Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy David Frum New York: Harper, 2020, $28.99 (h/b) Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us Amanda Carpenter New York: HarperCollins (Broadside Books), […]
[PDF file]: […] pinned on the burgeoning punk scene. Alas, Rhoda Dakar (later lead singer in The Bodysnatchers) recalls ‘Joe Strummer talked in slogans’; Paul Weller proclaimed he would vote Conservative at the next election;4 Malcolm McLaren was too obviously a hustler; Ian Dury and John Lydon were, in different ways, unpredictable. This left Tom Robinson (who […]
[PDF file]: Collapse of stout party Eden, Suez and America Simon Matthews Have you heard the one about the Conservative Prime Minister who is disowned by the right-wing of the Tory Party for not seeing through a bombastic and nationalist policy, and disowned by its left-wing for duplicity and generally ridiculed by the wider public? Forget […]
[…] of the mid 1970s – control the money supply and you can control inflation – appealed because it was so simple. It took hold, particularly in the Conservative Party, where what became the Thatcherites adopted it and wrecked the British manufacturing economy with it between 1980 and 1984. Margaret Thatcher was a politician who […]
[…] and McTeague are political commentators, Libby Purves is not. Occasional Times columnist, BBC presenter for many years, Purves is the personification of the middle-of-the-road, mainstream, apolitical (but conservative) journalist.4 But things are now so bad even Purves was moved to write that the privatisation of public services has been a disaster5 – something the […]
[…] original formulation of something akin to the ‘power elite’ idea was the 1959 anthology edited by historian Hugh Thomas, The Establishment. This suggested that there were unelected conservative forces within the state which existed to prevent any (elected) liberal/left from enacting policies which threatened the status quo. The recent talk on the right about […]
[PDF file]: […] Barber was Heath’s Chancellor the Exchequer. Of the Thatcher/Major period, 1979-97 he notes: ‘ . . . Britain’s manufacturers should have thrived during the 18 years of Conservative rule . . . yet the reverse was the case with the manufacturing industry suffering painful reductions in markets, capacity Dan Atkinson’s thoughts on what is […]
[…] original formulation of something akin to the ‘power elite’ idea was the 1959 anthology edited by historian Hugh Thomas, The Establishment. This suggested that there were unelected conservative forces within the state which existed to prevent any (elected) liberal/left from enacting policies which threatened the status quo. The recent talk on the right about […]
[PDF file]: […] two: ‘The reporters David Graham and Bob Satchwell, and their crusading editor Barry Askew, examined Sir Douglas Osmond’s careful description of how Bill Harrison used the pliant Conservative leader of Lancashire County Council to bend Chief Constable Stanley Parr to his will.’ In fairness though, we are at least being given a clear indication […]
