[…] 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 […]
[PDF file]: […] what we need. Remind you of anyone? And does all this presage an attempt to revive the SAS as the right-wing cultural phenomenon it became during the Thatcher years? In the aftermath of the SAS storming of the Iranian Embassy in May 1980 and then the retaking of the Falklands in 1982, the Regiment […]
[PDF file]: […] 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 […]
[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 […]
[PDF file]: […] per hour grew faster than France, Germany and even the United States. (pp. 8/9) What, things were better under John Major and Tony Blair than during the Thatcher years? You might think this would give our authors pause, but it doesn’t. It all seemed very different at the turn of the millennium. At the […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] or 30 9 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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] or 30 9 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]: […] Gaitskellites. In the late 1960s and 70s it gathered round Roy Jenkins and eventually split Labour to form the SDP – a move which ensured that Mrs Thatcher won the 1983 general election. After which, job done, the SDP faded away. After the Labour election defeat of 1987 its leadership, Kinnock and Hattersley, set […]
