Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] many years. Criminal trials may reveal yet more about Murdoch, the Met and the Chipping Norton set. Then perhaps Murdoch, the South Yorkshire Police and the Margaret Thatcher set followed by Murdoch, the ‘war on terror’ warriors and the Tony Blair set? The Birtists The demise of BBC director general, George Entwistle, was hastened […]

Six Moments of Crisis: inside British foreign policy by Gill Bennett

Lobster Issue 65 (Summer 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] indeed they have. The concentrated nature of the material yields some marvellous anecdotes and demolishes a few myths along the way. Thus those to whom the pre- Thatcher Tories were suave internationalist moderates may be surprised to learn that Selwyn Lloyd, Foreign Secretary at the time of Suez, ‘spoke no foreign languages, had never […]

I helped carry William Burroughs to the medical tent

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] young black men. This argument forms part of the plot of the recent film The Bank Job (2006). 39 Summer 2010 re-emerge with the ascent of Margaret Thatcher. His success in establishing commercial radio in the 1930s and his high society connections – which lasted throughout his life – would clearly have been a […]

The Defence of the Realm

Lobster Issue

[…] certainly did not think MI5 was on the ball where the perceived menace from the Soviets and the left was concerned; and they got access to Mrs Thatcher when she was leader of the Opposition after 1975. On p. 670 Andrew tells us that when William Whitelaw became Home Secretary in the first Thatcher […]

The Killing of Thomas Niedermayer by David Blake Knox

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019) FREE

[PDF file]: […] secret contact with the chair of the disciplinary appeal panel, in order to subvert the fair hearing to which I was entitled. The findings led to Mrs Thatcher being forced to admit in Parliament that, as Prime Minister, she and her Ministers had ‘inadvertently’ misled Parliament about my role in Northern Ireland. As a […]

AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain by David Wearing

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019) FREE

[PDF file]: […] British exports of educational and financial services; but they also pay for military hardware, building on the relationship which started in the 1960s. British governments since the Thatcher era have actively supported arms exports to the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region which now accounts for 50 per cent of ‘all defence sales […]

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

Lobster Issue 69 (Summer 2015) FREE

[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 Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 81 (Summer 2021) FREE

[PDF file]: […] situation with the Old Corruption of the eighteenth century. (p. 3) The political and social order that has been coming into existence in this country since the Thatcher years can be quite accurately described as the New Corruption. Thatcher began the process, Blair consolidated it in place and Cameron saved it from collapse after […]

View from Bridge 89

Lobster Issue

[…] of meaningful change in modern British politics begins with the realisation that politics must act in service of the British people, rather than dictating to them. Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism. Tony Blair reimagined a stale, outdated Labour Party into one that could […]

The long goodbye? Taking on the consultants

Lobster Issue 90 (2025) FREE
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[PDF file]: […] consultancies rocketed: At the time of the 1979 general election in the United Kingdom, the government was spending about £6 million on consulting services annually; when Margaret Thatcher stepped down as prime minister eleven years later, the amount was more than 40 times greater at £246 million.8 Where the Iron Lady failed, Reeves’ ‘Iron […]

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