The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] 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. […]

Britannia Unchained, by Kwasi Kwarteng , Elizabeth Truss et al

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[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 […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

Shirley Williams

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] the Independent on Sunday of 1 September 2013 Yasmin Alibhai Brown wrote the following in a piece called ‘The special relationship is over. At long last!’ ‘When Thatcher and Reagan were locked in their long embrace, I 50 The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11, Issue 37, No. 1, September 14, 2013, available at . 51 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] the (theoretical) risk of prosecution. Today it wouldn’t. What has changed? Then it seemed worthwhile to stick two fingers up to the British state, headed by Margaret Thatcher, by revealing (minor) state secrets. Today we have Cameron and Clegg, imitations of Tony Blair, Thatcher’s successor, who hardly matter. Then, influenced by research on the […]

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 […]

They were the less pleasant side of capitalism

Lobster Issue 93 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] marked reluctance to contemplate renationalising water, often because the ‘cost would be too high’. This attitude perhaps ignores the fact that when the water industry was privatised, Thatcher wrote off £5 billion of debt, gave the industry a ‘green dowry’ of £1.6 billion and other sweeteners were thrown in – such as tax writeoffs […]

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 […]

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