View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] the 1980s which were released in late December, was one concerning the Peter Wright book Spycatcher. The Guardian reported that on one of these documents prime minister Thatcher wrote in October 1986: ‘I am utterly shattered by the revelations in the book. The consequences of publication would be enormous.’ 8 Obviously she didn’t have […]

View from Bridge copo

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 […]

Off Message, and, Standing for Something

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012)

[PDF file]: […] Commons in 1997, looking forward to a long period of Labour government that would ‘buttress parliamentary power, entrench historic civil liberties which had been threatened by the Thatcher administration and address the twin problems of poverty and inequality’. He was, in his own words, a ‘poor innocent fool’. What went wrong? He fixes most […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

View from

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

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