The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] May) making the striking claim that ‘Trump’s hundred days have been a triumph. The swamp is being drained’. It was by Nile Gardiner, Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.1 This organisation bearing the Blessed Margaret’s name is not to be confused with the Margaret Thatcher […]

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 […]

View from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] May) making the striking claim that ‘Trump’s hundred days have been a triumph. The swamp is being drained’. It was by Nile Gardiner, Director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, DC.1 This organisation bearing the Blessed Margaret’s name is not to be confused with the Margaret Thatcher […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] credible industrial strategy to get the UK back on its feet’.18 Well, well, well: ‘Industrial strategy’ and ‘the establishment’ is the language (and thought) of the pre- Thatcher era. Curious that he’s a City commentator because few in the City give a dull fuck about an industrial strategy – or the nation, for that […]

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)

[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)

[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)

[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 […]

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 […]

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