Boneheaded ex-PM Margaret Thatcher’s most senior official warned 29 years ago that her City free-for-all could mean a future financial collapse, newly released government papers revealed yesterday.
The notorious Tory ignored the accurate predictions of Cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong and went ahead with her “Big Bang” that saw stock exchange regulations torn up in 1986.
In a private memorandum he set out a string of concerns months before she tore up City rules — an act linked directly to the 2008 collapse of the banking system.
The once beating heart of British journalism was undone by technological change, union battles and Murdoch’s 1986 Wapping coup – leaving London the only major capital without a press club, says TIM GOPSILL
The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY
Our two-tear Chancellor’s woes at PMQs caused a multimillion-pound sinking feeling on the bond market, writes ANDREW MURRAY
SOLOMON HUGHES explains how the PM is channelling the spirit of Reagan and Thatcher with a ‘two-tier’ nuclear deterrent, whose Greenham Common predecessor was eventually fought off by a bunch of ‘punks and crazies’


