The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] shop. Heseltine served in the government of Edward Heath, which was partly responsible for the worst inflation this country has every experienced, and in that of Margaret Thatcher, which created the worst recession since the 1930s. I was curious to see how he dealt with these politically uncomfortable facts. Not well, is the answer. […]

lob86View from Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] call) Thatcherism and thus the person chiefly responsible for the creation of today’s Broken-down Britain. Of the triumvirate in charge of the economic policy in the first Thatcher government, he was the one who knew what he was doing. Geoffrey Howe and Thatcher merely had some free market clichés in their brains at the […]

lob86View from Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] call) Thatcherism and thus the person chiefly responsible for the creation of today’s Broken-down Britain. Of the triumvirate in charge of the economic policy in the first Thatcher government, he was the one who knew what he was doing. Geoffrey Howe and Thatcher merely had some free market clichés in their brains at the […]

Nine Crises: Fifty Years of Covering the British Economy from Devaluation to Brexit by William Keegan

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] the approach he is taking: the devaluation crisis of 1967; the oil crisis and three day week of 1973; the 1976 IMF crisis; so-called sado-monetarism and the Thatcher recession 1979-82; the Lawson boom and bust and fallout with Thatcher 1983-89; Black Wednesday 1992; the financial crash 2007/9; Osbourne’s austerity 2010-16 and the Referendum and […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] condolence book for Smith at show that Harold was held in high regard by Nigerians. * Revolutionary defeatism A piece in the Guardian (19 March 2011), ‘ Thatcher papers reveal how she stoked rightwing rebellion in war against “wets”’, notes that Thatcher’s private secretary, Ian Gow MP, met with Labour MP Neville Sandelson, six […]

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 Tony Blair reimagined a stale, outdated Labour Party into one that could […]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 view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] the year he won the Nobel Prize for Economics. His belief in the centrality of controlling the economy’s money supply was adopted by the Tory right around Thatcher, who had rejected Keynesian notions of the state managing the economy. Previous to this, in 1972 when they were faced with rising unemployment, Edward Heath’s government […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011)

[PDF file]: […] the online condolence book for Smith1 show that Harold was held in high regard by Nigerians. Revolutionary defeatism A piece in the Guardian (19 March 2011), ‘ Thatcher papers reveal how she stoked rightwing rebellion in war against “wets”’, notes that Thatcher’s private secretary, Ian Gow MP, met with Labour MP Neville Sandelson, six […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] Conservative MP Matthew Parris and Gerard Baker, former editor of The Wall Street Journal. They devoted their columns in The Times to bemoaning the decline of the Thatcher legacy (Baker, 17 October) and yearning for someone like Mrs Thatcher to sort things out (Parris, 20 October). The difficulty most of us have in changing […]

The long goodbye? Taking on the consultants

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[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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