When the Lights Went Out, and, Strange Days Indeed

Lobster Issue

[…] Party election victories in 1970 and 1979, heralding a return to the market: the half-hearted version under Heath, ‘Selsdon man’, and then the real thing with Mrs Thatcher. As the delusions of the free marketeers crumble, so the history of the years in which these notions were dominant will be re-examined. And as the […]

The Lexit delusion

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: […] parties such as the Referendum Party and United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), found increasing support within the Conservative Party, especially once it was taken up by Margaret Thatcher. She came to see the EU as a threat to everything her governments had achieved between 1979 and 1990. The result was a series of arguments […]

Shirley Williams

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] the Independent on Sunday of 1 September 2013 Yasmin Alibhai Brown wrote the following in a piece called ‘The special relationship is over. At long last!’ ‘When Thatcher and Reagan were locked in their long embrace, I 50 The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 37, No. 1, September 14, 2013, available at . 51 […]

Climbing the Bookshelves

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] on bankers’ bonuses? 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 […]

‘Nobody told us we could do this’

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012)

[PDF file]: […] Rob Wilson MP points out that Clegg had – apparently – been a member of the Conservative Association at Cambridge University, and that he later worked for Thatcher cabinet member Sir Leon Brittain when Brittain was an EU Commissioner. It was clear, then, that Clegg might be more inclined than his predecessors to talk […]

Off Message, and, Standing for Something

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] Commons in 1997, looking forward to a long period of Labour government that would ‘buttress parliamentary power, entrench historic civil liberties which had been threatened by the Thatcher administration and address the twin problems of poverty and inequality’. He was, in his own words, a ‘poor innocent fool’. What went wrong? He fixes most […]

Deception in High Places: a history of bribery in Britain’s arms trade by Nicholas Gilby

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015)

[PDF file]: […] history of bribery in Britain’s arms trade Nicholas Gilby London: Pluto Press, 2015, p/b, £14.00 This is very good: clearly written, massively documented1 and carefully done. Mark Thatcher, for example, some of whose wealth is widely believed to come from BAE’s 1985 Al Yamamah deal with the Saudis, isn’t mentioned. What might be sayable […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] in explaining Soviet policy and thinking just at the point when the Soviet Union was cracking up, thus smoothing to way for the Gorbachev relationship first with Thatcher and then with the Americans. ‘Decisive’ – maybe not; but not insignificant. . . . or get off the pot I have distrusted Andrew Neil since […]

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