[PDF file]: […] (combined with the failure to find any of the ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that had been used to justify the invasion) tainted Iraq irredeemably in the public mind. Back home, the political scene is viewed through the lens less of the big parties and of ‘Westminster bubble’ stories than by telling the stories of […]
[PDF file]: […] chess master Natan Sharansky, or writer Alexander Solshenitsyn, once household names in the West but neither of whom are ‘celebrities’ in the West today. Also keep in mind that this is a two-way generational phenomenon. Young Eastern Europeans have absolutely no memory of Communism or the former Soviet system any more than Western ones […]
[PDF file]: […] 24 September 2017 he is recording that ‘I have lost my respect for him. He is a clown, a self-centred ego, an embarrassing buffoon, with an untidy mind and sub-zero diplomatic judgement. He is an international stain on our reputation’. And to make matters even worse, he ‘thinks he is the next Churchill’. (p. […]
[PDF file]: […] just giving away part of the power of the state which NuLab were supposed to be trying to articulate in the interests of the British people (never mind the less well off/ disadvantage/deprived/poor/working class – pick a term). Such privatisation speaks of extremely low self-esteem: for we – the state and politicians – are […]
[PDF file]: […] things would work, then he would try them and see. Failure would be down to the patient; success was his alone. What was his theory of the mind? (Though theory might dignify and elevate his thinking, such as it was.) It was quite simple and, shorn of psychiatric and psychoanalytic baggage, it is revealed […]
[PDF file]: […] When I look around the Commons, I see dozens of people who have made a lasting difference for good’. Even those MPs whose political ideas ‘may to mind be completely round the twist, unfeeling and cruel’ nevertheless did not start out ‘misguided, let alone evil’. (pp. 14-15). This seems to be taking Christian charity […]
[PDF file]: […] about this, remembering the dominance of Oxbridge-educated elites in British politics during the 1960s and 1970s when I was a young man. Recently, however, I changed my mind. The key moment for me was an MA dissertation by a student of mine, on the impact of the 1979 Brandt Report (North-South: a programme for […]
[PDF file]: The view from the bridge Robin Ramsay As always, thanks to Nick Must and Garrick Alder for editorial help with Lobster. Check this I am not a lover of faction. I prefer my facts and my fiction distinct. I didn’t even read Chris Mullin’s A Very British Coup. However I received an email from one […]
