[…] with Lobster. *new* Broken-down Blighty In my local library book sale I picked up a copy of Dominic Sandbrook’s 2019 account of the early years of Mrs Thatcher, Who Dares Wins. Yes, the title is meant to evoke the SAS and the Iranian Embassy siege but it also represents Sandbrook’s view that Mrs T […]
[PDF file]: […] the transnational elite network.’ (p. 13) I also noted a retelling of the story, originally recounted by Jon Ronson in the Guardian in 1999, of how Mrs Thatcher was invited to the 1975 meeting and wowed a number of Americans who were there, which led to her being taken seriously and promoted in the […]
[PDF file]: […] protecting free markets while building national capabilities in telecoms, biotech and other key industries.’ The free market and national capabilities? Sounds awfully like what existed before Mrs Thatcher took office in 1979. Another sign of change was the publication a week earlier1 on the Telegraph website of a striking essay by Professor Lee Jones2 […]
[PDF file]: […] lost control of events. The fallout cost Labour the 1979 General Election and let in Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives. This is where the great change really started. The Thatcher governments, in power from 1979-1990, were increasingly dominated by disciples of Hayek and Friedman. Leading Cabinet Ministers such as Chancellors Sir Geoffrey Howe (1979-83) and Nigel […]
[…] the 1980s which were released in late December, was one concerning the Peter Wright book Spycatcher. The Guardian reported that on one of these documents prime minister Thatcher wrote in October 1986: ‘I am utterly shattered by the revelations in the book. The consequences of publication would be enormous.’ 1 Obviously she didn’t have […]
[…] politicians to get real. But politicians can’t ‘get real’ just yet. No mainstream British politician is willing to say that Britain is run down because (a) the Thatcher and New Labour administrations abandoned the manufacturing sector of the economy, and (b) the prosperous haven’t paid enough taxes for 40 years. For a while longer […]
[…] the 1980s which were released in late December, was one concerning the Peter Wright book Spycatcher. The Guardian reported that on one of these documents prime minister Thatcher wrote in October 1986: ‘I am utterly shattered by the revelations in the book. The consequences of publication would be enormous.’ 1 Obviously she didn’t have […]
[PDF file]: […] that have no tradition of Common Law or Habeas Corpus and where secret justice has been the norm and not the exception. But with the rise of Thatcher and the great show trials of the early nineties related to the clandestine Anglo-American arming of Iraq – Euromac,5 Ordtec, Matrix Churchill, Elizabeth Forsyth, Asil Nadir […]
[PDF file]: […] well positioned will be disappointed, as they will be in seeking any sharp observations on British politics. Those who remember the Callaghan government and the rise of Thatcher may recall Williams and other Labour right-wing ministers vociferously rushing to the defence of one of their number, Reg Prentice, faced with deselection. Prentice subsequently switched […]
[PDF file]: […] deplores how ‘out of touch’ Labour were with ‘ordinary people’ 33 Winter 2010 in the 80s (which may have been true at that point), without demonstrating that Thatcher and the Tory right were ever more ‘in touch’ or commanded a consensus of views (they didn’t), or that Thatcher would have won so easily without […]
