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 Tony Blair reimagined a stale, outdated Labour Party into one that could […]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

[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 […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 61 (Summer 2011) FREE

[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 […]

Consultants Challen

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE

[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 view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016) FREE

[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 85 (Summer 2023) FREE

[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 Mandelson legacy

Lobster Issue 91 (2025) FREE

[PDF file]: […] journalism at home and abroad, I’d become the head of external affairs at the National Union of Teachers in the early 1980s to take on such choice Thatcher or 1 2 This is detailed at great length in Paul Holden’s The Fraud (London: OR Books, 2025). It is summarised here or . 3 1 […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] as chief executive of the Tax Payers’ Alliance and Williams was the CBI’s chief economic adviser. 2 1 Type to enter text 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 […]

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