[PDF file]: […] in his Eye column’. (p. 264) ‘told that he wished to be sufficiently well briefed to be able to counter “some of the rather extreme advice” Mrs Thatcher had received.’ That advice had been coming from Crozier and his colleagues.7 A cautious, tiresomely bureaucratic MI5 is how David Shayler saw the organisation in the […]
[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 […]
[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 […]
[PDF file]: […] Gaitskellites. In the late 1960s and 70s it gathered round Roy Jenkins and eventually split Labour to form the SDP – a move which ensured that Mrs Thatcher won the 1983 general election. After which, job done, the SDP faded away. After the Labour election defeat of 1987 its leadership, Kinnock and Hattersley, set […]
[…] 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 […]
[PDF file]: […] are not Socratic dialogues; for the most part they are the necessary pantomimes to rubberstamp decisions taken in Whitehall. On the other hand, this was 1984: the Thatcher regime was still being challenged by the left; the Labour Party had not then embraced the ‘Washington consensus’; the American banks had not completed their take-over […]
[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 […]
[PDF file]: […] situation with the Old Corruption of the eighteenth century. (p. 3) The political and social order that has been coming into existence in this country since the Thatcher years can be quite accurately described as the New Corruption. Thatcher began the process, Blair consolidated it in place and Cameron saved it from collapse after […]
1976 and all that: the IMF event Robin Ramsay I still buy a daily paper, The Times. One of its regular columnists is Daniel Finkelstein. Lord Finkelstein, as he is now, has been around the upper reaches of the centre (and latterly the centre–right) of British politics for 40 years and is thus one of […]
[PDF file]: The Neoconservative Threat to World Order Washington’s perilous war for hegemony Paul Craig Roberts Atlanta (GA): Clarity Press, 2016, $29.95, p/b Chances are you already know the author’s writing: if you’re reading Lobster you’re probably also reading other left-leaning sites and Roberts is widely published on them. Roberts is a very striking figure. A distinguished […]
