[…] pay to guarantee assured outcomes to his backers: active members, after all, can rock the boat carrying the big donor cheques which keep New Labour afloat. The Conservative party is no better placed and it is difficult to see how they would want to change the direction of foreign policy anyway. Whatever Hutton concludes, […]
[…] a number of consultation papers and statements covering encryption and electronic commerce in recent years, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) taking the lead role.(9) Both Conservative and Labour governments, in their 1997 and 1998 papers, proposed some form of key escrow system, in which a user’s private encryption key is held by […]
[…] International Red Cross campaign against landmines. What would normally have been a strictly humanitarian gesture was given a political dimension by the fact that John Major’s rapidly-deflating Conservative government had stalled repeatedly on banning landmines, whereas Labour was promising a foreign policy with ‘an ethical dimension’. Declassified US diplomatic cables record that ‘Government officials […]
Oliver Kamm London: The Social Affairs Unit, 2005, h/b, £13.99 Kamms’ Anti-totalitarianism was published in the same week and possibly on the same day as the Henry Jackson Society announced itself to the world. So this is a kind of manifesto for that group. (1 ) It’s a nice try, in a way, this … Read more
[…] made public.’ You can’t buy an endorsement better than that, thanks very much. And if ‘the Establishment’ was cross with ‘West’ it didn’t stop him becoming a Conservative MP; and under Margaret Thatcher, who hated dishers of dirt and secrets. So, for me, ‘West’ has always been a puzzle: a conservative (and Conservative) historian […]
[…] The author’s account also shows a Labour Party dimly aware of all this, making the occasional half-hearted stab at reining in ASIO, which the agency and its conservative allies easily outflanked or overturned. Cain’s account has the familiar virtues and the faults of academic writing on these subjects. On the plus side it is […]
[…] as he ends his period in office mired by the honours scandal. The reason that the Economist gave for backing his re-election, that he was the best conservative on offer was totally true; but even die-hard conservatives must have been shocked at his totally supine attitude to the Bush administration. He provided legitimacy to […]
Compromised Reporting Taking its cue from a powerful network of far-right radio commentators, the American press insists on noting only those financial scandals which don’t sully ultra- conservative politicians. Of either party. For example: Rush Limbaugh, who has become the Republican Party’s Goebbels, loudly applauded Clinton’s appointment of Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, an appalling […]
[…] JOSEPH KBE (1936) OBE (19) B 1885, D 10.7.61 KINGS COLL LONDON 1913 BAR 1914 EUROPEAN WAR 1921 MI5 (CIVIL ASSIST TO MIL INTELLIGENCE) 1924 HEAD OF CONSERVATIVE CENTRAL OFFICE INTELLIGENCE DEPT (RENAMED PUBLICITY DEPT) 1930-39 DIRECTOR CONSERVATIVE RESEARCH DEPT 1934-39 DEP CHAIRMAN NATIONAL PUBLICITY BUREAU 1940-42 DEP CHAIRMAN SECURITY EXEC – OVERSEEING THE […]
[…] of Labour MPs could effectively bring down the government. For some years past the arguments for a realignment had been taken seriously by a section of the Conservative Party who had been close to MacMillan. Since 1973, Reg Prentice had taken a lone path, one which would eventually take him out of the Labour […]
