The sad news of Nigel Lawson’s death gives us the opportunity to remember his great contribution to the success of our country. We mourn with his family but celebrate a life well lived. It was a life which made a big addition  to the debate about how to promote prosperity for the many and how to fuel faster growth with better economic performance. The arguments he deployed are relevant today as we consider how to carry on the great task of promoting greater prosperity for more people.
Nigel  Lawson proved that lower tax rates can bring more revenue and higher living standards. Faced with a Treasury that did not want to believe you can increase the income by reducing the tax rate, he made big reductions in the company tax rate and the rates of Income Tax. This helped propel the economy to faster growth. Rich people came or returned to the Uk to invest, to create jobs and make their homes. Large international companies took a more positive view on the attractions of the UK as a place to put their car plant or their consumer  product factory.
The Conservatives took over after a poor decade. Half the car industry output had been lost in the first ten years of European membership. With no tariff protection the Uk industry lost out to continental competition. In the 1980 s with new policies that were friendlier to business the industry was rebuilt by attracting in new overseas investors including the leading Japanese car makers.
He worked closely with Margaret Thatcher  in the early years as Chancellor to liberate the self employed and small businesses, as well as to foster more large company business. I remember being able to draft for a speech of Margaret’s the news that the Income tax rate cuts meant the rich paid more income tax in cash , paid more income tax in real terms, and paid a higher proportion of the total income tax take. The depressing socialist case against tax cuts for the rich seemed absurd. The  way to tax the rich more is to set tax rates at levels they will stay to pay. Nigel was out to reverse the brain drain of the Labour years when successful UK people from pop stars to entrepreneurs left the country in search of lower tax rates. The government welcomed aspiration and recognised the importance  of spreading wealth widely, not confiscating it for a jealous state to spend.
Nigel Lawson had been Energy Secretary and recognised from his experiences that introducing private capital and competition into major national monopolies could help transform the country. The privatisation of gas, electricity and telecommunications unleashed a feast of new investment. It transformed an out of date electro mechanical phone system with electronic technology and extra capacity. It drove down electricity prices whilst shifting from dirty coal to cleaner gas , making it a great environmental as well as business policy. It became possible to get a phone line quickly without having to share it with the neighbours. The UK got cheaper energy to help business compete.Nigel and the Treasury resisted opening the monopolies up to maximum competition, though over time it was still possible to move policy in that direction. I always argued introducing competition would improve outcomes more than just changing ownership, though both were helpful.
Nigel Lawson was an innovative Financial Secretary to the Treasury setting out a new control system for the UK economy which worked well, combining controlling budget deficits with curbing money supply growth. After years of boom inflation and poor output the UK economy started to perform much better. It was a pity that later as Chancellor he lost faith in his own economic policy framework, accepting official advice to seek to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This introduced an unwelcome lack of discipline into money and credit , created a fast inflation and then led to a traditional boom/ bust cycle as the authorities battled with their own past mistakes. It also led to tensions with the Prime Minister who believed the advice she was given that the Exchange Rate Mechanism would be destabilising.
Nigel Lawson achieved a great deal for our country. He showed that a country needs to earn its living, and can only do that when it backs the entrepreneurs and investors and allows lower tax rates to work their magic. Â Just as Ireland today shows how a low corporation tax rate gives them a giant advantage in attracting big business, jobs and investment, so Nigel Lawson reminds us just how much we need such bravery again to grow faster and offer better pay and wider ownership to the many. The Opposition parties in Parliament seem to think you can keep upping the tax rates on the enterprising and successful, apparently unaware of the history. Tax too much and the enterprising will leave. Tax too much and the new factories go elsewhere. Tax too much and you will raise less revenue for public services not more. Thanks to Nigel we know what works better.
April 10, 2023
Nigel Lawson was, without question the most successful Chancellor in recent history. Who will be vying for top spot for the Chancellor who has done the most harm since then?
April 10, 2023
It’s a toss up between Gordon Brown and Rishi Sunak. Although Hunt’s doing his level best to make it a 3-way contest.
April 10, 2023
Well I probably agree but Hunt is in effect Sunak’s puppet. But perhaps we forget just how appalling John ERM Major was (destroying the economy with his ERM and 17% mortgage rates & burying the party for 3+ terms) also the appalling tax to death remainers Osborne and Hammond.
April 10, 2023
Osborne even gave us tax on profits people had never made for landlords. Thus hitting both landlords and tenants hardly very sustainable so fewer and fewer properties available to rent.
April 10, 2023
17% interest was Lamont
April 10, 2023
No, it wasn’t. It was Lamont trying to carry out Major’s flawed…disastrous policy.
April 10, 2023
Tragic for Lamont, who is quite sound, to have the reputation and record foisted on him by the Major.
April 10, 2023
They are the Top 3 Tossers of UK money into the drain.
April 10, 2023
Labour to blame Sunak for crashing the economy – says the headline in the Times today. Well not much doubt that he did that as Chancellor (with hugely long damaging lockdowns, furloughs, currency debasing, money printing, net zero expensive intermittent energy, test and trace, the net harm “vaccines”, the vast tax increases and huge government waste. But who was cheering all this lunacy on but Labour, Kier Starmer and virtually all the other parties – too little too late was their endless criticism.
April 10, 2023
Well John (ERM) Major, Brown, Osborne, Hammond, Javid, Sunak, Hunt have all been truly appalling. They have all increase taxes (and tax complexity) hugely strangling the economy which is the tax base and the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Sunak is perhaps the worse of this appalling list but Hunt (Sunak’s?) budget was dire. Sunak created the current inflation with his money printing( & Net Zero) and destroyed the economy with his furlough, extended lockdowns, currency debasing, the net zero insanity and his appalling tax, borrow, print and piss down the drain agenda. What is needed is a PM/Chancellor who at least halves the size of the largely parasitic state sector given the current bloated and virtually useless state it is in.
April 10, 2023
@BOF
Lawsonâs decision to âshadowâ the deutschmark ensured interest rates were cut in the spring of 1988 – at a time when the economy was overheating – to 7.5%. By the time Lawson resigned in October 1989 they had doubled to 15% and a deep recession was baked in – resulting in over 3 million unemployed. Thousands of good manufacturing firms exporting British products to the world went to the wall and hundreds of thousands of families had their homes repossessed.
Lawson was arguably the Tory chancellor who, responding to Thatcher’s monetarist dogma, set the financial conditions for this near total destruction of the Britsh industrial base, the end of balance of payments surpluses and the selling off to foreigners of highly profitable state industries emmploying millions of skilled workers.
In his later years Lawson became a climate change denier, writing pro-fossil fuel articles in the right-wing press. Famously, Lawson refused to set up a British sovereign wealth fund with our N Sea oil revenues, prefering to spend the money on tax cuts.
Reply Lawson designed a good anti 8nfkation policy based on controlling money and credit (similar to the then successful German one) only to cast it aside for the disastrous instabilities of tge boom/ bust European Exchange Rate system. UK industry in the 1980s under Labour and in 1979-82 under the Conservatives handling the inflation inheritance did get badly hit by entry into the EEC withdrawing all tariff protection coupled with Labourâs bad macro economic policies which gave us high inflation and recessions.
April 10, 2023
Long before the ERM Lawson deregulated credit and caused a massive house price boom. House prices more than doubled between 1985 and 1988. In the budget of 1988 he gave advance notice that joint mortgage tax relief was to cease on July 31st 1988. This advance notice poured petrol on the already overheating housing market. It got so bonkers that there were adverts placed in the papers by people begging strangers to buy a property with them so they could get in before the tax relief rule changed. How utterly irresponsible and incompetent. On August 1st 1988, with no first time buyers, the housing market simply stopped. House prices very, very slowly came down. In 1991 I bought a property in Wokingham for ÂŁ100k that had sold in 1987 for ÂŁ100k. Throw in the massive interest rate increases because of the ERM and we had hundreds of thousands of house repossessions.
Iâm afraid you view his tenure as chancellor through rose tinted spectacles. He was the same as all of you – allowing a debt fuelled boom followed by bust.
Reply Yes, he shadowed the DM which created a bubble. I tried to stop him at the time but once again the Treasury/Bank establishment was determined on a course that was bound to end in inflation.
April 10, 2023
That should have said âsold in 1987 for ÂŁ160kâ. A 60% house price crash!
April 10, 2023
Sakara Gold : âIn his later years Lawson became a climate change denier, writing pro-fossil fuel articles in the right-wing press.â
The real climate change deniers are those who deny that climate changed before the Industrial Revolution despite very clear evidence to the contrary, not only since the last ice age which ended just 11,000 years ago but for the last 500m years since the start of the Cambrian explosion. The world has even been warmer than it is today since the last ice age.
In actual fact, Lawson was not a climate change denier, he thought that climate change was happening but that adaptation was less costly than trying to control the climate.
April 10, 2023
Correct Richard – Lawson didn’t dispute climate change but did question how severe the actual outcomes would be (e.g. He didn’t beleive in the coming Armageddon) and more importantly – what we should (e.g. could afford to) do in practice. However, he was dubbed a “Climate Denier” and effectively banished from the BBC. Clearly there could be no deviation from the BBC’s Net Zero religious orthodoxity and Lawson was a Climate Heretic and therefore needed to be cast out into broadcasting oblivion.
Reply His main argument was an economic one that it would be cheaper to adapt to climate changes than to try to stop them by cancelling current fossil fuel based activities.
April 10, 2023
Yes Sir John – the UK does not (cannot) control global CO2 emmissons but we can do something to help protect ourselves from any potential local climate change. It seems to me that any threat in the UK would most probably be from flood or drought – but basically water-related. I would very much like to see investment (and policies) in these two areas, such that we can mitigate any potential impacts. Do we need to invest in new resevoirs and avoid water waste? Of course we do. That would cost money o course but deciding to stop building on flood plains would not, it’s a simple policy choice. Maybe I need to dream up a plausible reason why building new housing estates in stupid places generates more carbon emmsissions – someone might take notice then…?
April 10, 2023
S G
To add to the reply from SJR, Lord Lawson was not a climate change denier. There is no such thing as anthropogenic climate change is a fraud. He was a climate change realist and you may learn a great deal from Global Warming Policy Forum and Net Zero Watch.
April 10, 2023
Whereas today we have governments committed to absolute lunacy. As Professor Norman Fenton explains on his twitter feed: âReminder of what ânet zeroâ really means. This graphic from UK Govt FIRES project. Key points: all airports except Heathrow, Belfast & Glasgow to close by 2030. NO FLYING at all by 2050. No new petrol/diesel cars by 2030; by 2050 road use restricted to 60% of todayâs levelâ. Food and heating also to be cut by 60%.
Rpt: this is from the UK Govt FIRES project
April 10, 2023
BOF. 2 candidates spring instantly to mind – Sunak and Hunt!
April 10, 2023
The simple reason why lower (and simpler) taxes make for a better economy is that individuals and companies spend and invest their money so much better than governments do. The more you leave with them the better it is used and the larger economy you have next year plus many relocate or do not leave. Much of what the government spend actually do no good and does huge positive harm. Like Net Zero, HS2, the lockdowns, bonkers employment laws (like you can shortly be able to sue you employer if one of their customer offended you with something you just overheard).
April 10, 2023
@ Ashley – missing might be the lack of references to the bad done by PPE graduates but otherwise I read enough to assert you are LifeLogic. I claim my ÂŁ5.
April 10, 2023
So Australia and finally banned the AZ vaccine and Switzerland have stopped all Covid Vaccines other than for a few specific special cases. What on earth took them so long? But at least it seems they have someone numerate & rational in power who is finally taking action.
In the UK and at the WHO however…
So how much net harm needs to be done before our “experts” politicians and regulators finally do what they should have done at least 18 months back.
Indeed they should never have authorised these rather ineffective and dangerous vaccines (and certainly not for younger people and children).
April 10, 2023
It is not the big deal you are suggesting. Both the UK and Australia have monitored side effects since the first introduction of the vaccines. In Australia every report is properly investigated and the results published. There is nothing being hidden because there is nothing to hide. It is quite likely that were there only one vaccine available the AZ vaccine would still be in use. The decision to discontinue it is simple: there are three lower risk alternatives so why continue buying the fourth one with tax payers’ money?
The Australian TGA is very cautious. It states on its website:
“From Monday 20 March 2023 Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) is no longer available. …
“Pfizer, Moderna, or Novavax COVID-19 vaccines were preferred over AstraZeneca for people aged under 60 years. This was based on the higher risk and observed severity of a rare side effect called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia (TTS) after receiving AstraZeneca in people aged under 60 years compared with people aged 60 years or older….
“Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome is a very rare side effect of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.
“Researchers are still working to understand TTS. One theory is that, in rare cases in some people, the AstraZeneca vaccine might produce antibodies that react with platelets â making them âstick togetherâ. (Antibodies are the proteins made by your immune system to fight off foreign substances.)
“This can cause blood clots, which stops platelets (and blood) from circulating through the body.
“Itâs important to note that only a link has been established…
“The AstraZeneca vaccine has not been proven to cause TTS. Blood clots are common and not all types of blood clot that occur after vaccination will be linked to the vaccine.”
Deaths?
14 deaths in Australia linked to vaccines out of 66 million doses.
April 10, 2023
..and you really imagine, Peter, that you can believe official figures?
Lies and propaganda are the bread and butter of all governments these days.
April 10, 2023
Agree 100%
The last time this happened the press wasnât on side and called out the situation on national tv.
This time the powers that be took the precaution of making certain no one could gain say them.
And then of course thereâs the moneyâŠ..
April 10, 2023
There is no way they can save face now so crack on with the stupidity. When the turth comes out it will never be anybodies fault
April 10, 2023
It isn’t just the headline rate of corporation tax. The difference between 19% or 25% is in itself not all that significant. But raising it from 19 to 25% is significant because it indicates an attitude to enterprise and industry. It implies that the entire regulatory framework is shifting against business and enterprise. It raises uncertainty about profitability. It raises political risk. That is what is discouraging to investment and enterprise. In the UK the tax burden is at its highest since WW2. It isn’t just the high earners who are put off. So too are the lower levels who are mobile and will go elsewhere, and those who would start a business were the outlook more benign.
We hoped that was about to change. But it is now clear that the UK is to continue as a high tax country.
Related is the UK’s long standing low investment in training in useful skills and instead its reliance on importing from lower wage countries. That is cheaper in the short term but lays no foundations for future growth and enterprise. The government needs to incentivise employers to invest in their human capital. It isn’t difficult to do this, as Australia has shown. Employers were set a target of a percentage of revenue to be spent on training. The difference between actual spend and the target was then taken as tax. What employer wouldn’t rather spend the money on training their own people than handing it over to the government? Such a policy should be coupled to immigration policy so that employers must show the skills they need for a vacancy are not available in the UK before being allowed a visa for an imported person.
None of this is difficult.
Reply Increasing business tax bills is highly significant, especially when neighbouring Ireland charges half the rate.
April 10, 2023
a one-man crusade…
April 10, 2023
A voice in the wilderness!
April 10, 2023
The present PM and Chancellor increase taxes as if repelling votes was good for the party.
However, if such idiocy removes them from office it should be better for the country.
April 10, 2023
It does annoy me that the left wing press loves to say Lord Lawsonâs legacy to the U.K. is economic decline.
As far as I can make out the appalling Blair administration followed Lawsonâs economics closely because they had been so successful. Surely if they had been clever enough to see disaster coming they should have changed tack? Times change and maybe so should policies?
Liz Trussâs plans however were very much like Lord Lawsonâs policies and they sounded like an extremely good idea to me. Which is no doubt why they were scuppered!
He was such a glamorous person. A true statesman.
April 10, 2023
Oh and MY GOODNESS!
I forgot to mentionâŠ.
People were HAPPY when he was chancellor.đșđž
Those were wonderful days.
Unlike the terror-stricken, grey mess we are served up now!
The grinding days of âwhat nexteryâ and dread.
April 10, 2023
Agree – things just don’t feel right, people are anguish
April 10, 2023
Cuibono.
If you recall Labour did change tack when Brown followed Blair, which was followed by electoral change and a letter on a Treasury desk explaining that there was no money left.
April 10, 2023
But itâs true. Debt fuelled boom and bust which was copied very precisely by Blair and Brown. And by subsequent PMs and Chancellors. Weâve had base rate at almost zero for 10 years and massive increases in consumer and state debt. The process of deindustrialisation started under Lawson has been continued.
Reply The worst de industrialisation happened under Labour and Li Lab coalition 1974-9
April 10, 2023
Yeah right: the 1979 Conservative Manifesto had âsell back to private ownership the recently nationalised aerospace and shipbuilding concernsâ. Between 1979 and 1990, British Aerospace, Amersham International (nuclear research), Cable & Wireless, British Telecom, Rolls Royce, British Airways, British Gas, and some regional electricity companies were all privatised, and most subsequently taken over by foreign companies.
âPrivatisationâ, C.Rhodes, D.Hough, L.Butcher, 2014, Res.Pap.14/61, researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk
âMargaret Thatcher: One policy that let to more than 50 companies to be sold or privatisedâ, A.Osborne, 08/04/2013, Daily Telegraph.
If that is not the worst in terms of what affects the Smiths, Jones and Taylors of these isles, I expect Sir John to give us a full and detailed listing of what had been âdeindustrialisedâ by Labour and Li Lab (sic) 1974-1979. And possibly tell us all about his role as Director of No.10 Policy Unit and Minister for Corporate Affairs in these brilliant successes.
Reply Under Labour our shipyards, steel works, car plants and coalmines suffered big declines of output and employment, with many closures. Privatised BT undertook a huge investment in newer and better telecoms, our energy industries made huge changes with gas and oil from home production and gas based electricity replacing coal based.
April 10, 2023
+1
Oh yes! OK I do remember that! Gosh I thought at the end that he had staged a No 10 coup!
I was just talking about BlairâŠI read it somewhere. He said that he and obviously Brown (chancellor) would live with the Tory economic plans for first term. No wonder âŠheâd inherited a very healthy economy. People did not understand that in the wrong hands that could changeâŠ.NOT â Only get betterâ.But then Brown diverted to welfare, tax credits, building size of state etc. interventionism. Labour loves taking peopleâs money and then redistributing it as benefits. Spreading tentacles of govt.
So do we have Brown to blame for present situation? A Big State socialist closely followed by another one who called Blair â The Masterâ!
So who bears responsibility for present situation?
Extremists ( a minority of activist/entryists) have infiltrated every public and private body. Organisational capture!
April 10, 2023
The question for today is who can re-enact his philosophy in the current government, Treasury, and Bank of England, as a party or as an individual. No potential candidate is near the levers of power, nor is there a party in the HoC that comes anywhere near believing in such a direction. We are suffering negativity such that I wonder if our so called leadership wants a thriving sovereign UK. There has to be a shifting of the political tectonic plates in the UK to achieve Lawson Land. If it is to happen it has to come from the electorate. If they fail to respond they will get yet another five years of the mediocrity they currently experience.
April 10, 2023
Heaven preserve us from his philosophy. Weâve already got high enough house prices. Weâve gone from one wage supporting a family to two wages and sometimes people needing multiple jobs just to put food on the table. No more debt please. It all started under Lawson and Thatcher.
April 10, 2023
It wasnât quite so rosy as you imply before 1983 Mike, I remember my father and his colleagues all working more than 60 hours per week, in my fatherâs case to keep my Mum at home looking after his children with a part-time job doing about 16 hours on my Nanâs days off work so she could provide free child-care, no child-tax credits, working tax credits in those days, I think he earned a little over the wage it was decided for free school dinners so had to pay for everything so we had sandwiches as their budget didnât stretch to school dinners.
Men continued-on working more than 48 hours per week until it was decided by Europe that women should do a bigger share equal rights, same age pension etc., overtime rates dropped after 1998 with the introduction of the Working Time Directive and average hours have dropped between 37.5 to 40 hours per week, which is why direct pay comparisons arenât always like for like as often overtime hours attracted a higher rate of pay per hour for the male worker, now women workers pay more than half their pay back out in childcare to nurseries it all keeps the economy looking like it is growing.
April 11, 2023
Re: your last sentence
20/03/2023 âChildcare puzzle: Which countries in Europe have the highest and lowest childcare costs?â, euronews.com
April 11, 2023
Yes, the destruction of childminders is responsible for many of the hiked-up costs for working-class parents. Our ratio of carers to infants is lower than in the EU in many instances. Many nations train their next-generation child care specialists from 16 in the workplace as we used to before this was stopped, earning their NVQ vocationally. The old NNEB vocational training often formed a large part of that, thus increasing ratios at lower costs with on-the-job training. Europa says, “The most common age to start full-time compulsory education is 6 years in the EU”. Children in France and Hungary are the earliest starters, being required to begin compulsory education at 3 years old. In contrast, children in Estonia and Croatia are not obliged to start education before they reach the age of 7, I wonder what free infant care they provide instead of school provision?
Germany doesn’t make its fair contribution to NATO, so they have a large budget to spend elsewhere, as does Ireland. We are not all even and equal and never have been. I think it needs much more examination than a one-off spending comparison.
The UK pays out a lot of money in foreign aid, aid camps in Jordan and Syria, joining in with America’s Nato plans; you seem only to compare what the UK is more expensive at, not what the UK charges less or spends less on.
April 10, 2023
âHe was such a glamorous person.â
Maybe you are thinking of the daughter, Nigella?
April 10, 2023
No.
I always felt that Lord Lawson was a glamorous person.
Very typical of Oxford graduates of his generation.( My lovely uncle was one).
Men of courage and stature, redolent of leather-bound books, good whisky and cigars.
Polite, friendly and talented.
People I thought who SHOULD be in power.
Whom I could respect.
They scarcely exist now!
April 10, 2023
Then can someone please explain why the current tory government refuses to apply the lessons learned – why they are going out of their way to do the total opposite to what Nigel Lawson achieved?
April 10, 2023
Simple, because the majority are socialist remainers. Until there is an electoral clear out we are stuck with mediocracy.
April 10, 2023
We have to wonder why SJ is trotting out Lawson and tax cuts at this juncture. Is it because Lawson was such a brilliant chancellor of the exchequer? Probably not, The Lawson boom lasted a couple of years and led into deep problems – houses lost, millions unemployed. The Lawson model was preceded by the similar Maudling and Barber booms. none of which has provided any lasting economic model for the UK. The Lawson model has not been followed either – because it failed.
So why might SJ be trotting out Lawson as a model – tax is the answer. There is the threat of tax rises on the horizon and SJ and his rich mates will not like that at all. So bang the drum for tax cuts. Implement a few tax cuts and the magic of the market will provide – except it won’t. Well not unless a lot of other things change as a precursor – planning reform and reversal of Brexit being the main ones. Without those changes cutting tax will only lead to a re-run of the 1960s, the 1970s and the 1980s.
Worse still. Because we have wasted our resources and flogged off the family silver and left the good running of water, electricity and gas to ‘the market’ as well as freezing planning and neglecting all infrastructure there is now not much choice but to raise taxes. That is why SJ and friends are starting to wail.
Nowadays the only thing the Lawson name brings to mind is cookery books.
April 10, 2023
It brings âhouse price booms, recession and unemploymentâ to my mind. For the only time in my life I was made redundant thanks to Lawsonâs boom and bust. At one point around 1990, I went to see a former boss to see if there was any work going. We went up to the roof of the building (in London) and he said âwhat do you see?â âNot a single tower craneâ was my reply. In earlier years we used tobregularly count the cranes to see who had the most work. He did a great job of destroying the construction industry – which took 7 or 8 years to recover. I remember a site in Crowthorne where they put the foundations in for a block of flats. The builder went broke and that site stayed locked up for many years. Charles Church eventually bought it, demolished the work that had been done and built detached houses there.
April 10, 2023
Jim2
Reversal of Brexit.
If we tried to get back in it would an even bigger stitch up than the first time.
There are more than a few countries would extract a very hard price even to consider it.
With all that’s going on at the moment there are more than a few EU members getting a tad nervous about the way things are heading.
April 10, 2023
@ Jim2 – So it was a bad thing we had booms under Maudlin, Barber and Lawson but the busts under Jenkins, Healey and Brown were better for us?
As for your view “…there is now not much choice but to raise taxes…” you perhaps missed what happened when Margaret’s “my brilliant chancellor” did the opposite, both in the aftermath and when Sir John explained it now?
April 10, 2023
I can understand the DUP’s reluctance to return to Stormont. It would confirm that they accept NI is a second class member of the UK. Our PM calls for compromise having himself compromised NI’s position as a member of the UK, in his desperation to get an agreement over the NIP with the EU. A minefield set by May, failed in correction by Johnson, diluted and unacceptable thanks to Sunak. When will this appeasing government wake up to this minefield, apply Art 16 or if now defunct, just say no to this blatant device designed to split the UK.
April 10, 2023
Iâm afraid the Govt. have no options now. Itâs the Ukraine solution now.
April 10, 2023
Since I posted this I am sorry to see the return of the petrol bomb.
The US President should not visit Northern Ireland.
April 10, 2023
NI is a second class member of the UK and that is the reality also for its 1.9 million people it is costing us 15 to 20 billion per year to maintain. Donaldson obviously doesn’t understand the danger of all of this to himself and his party all fast approaching because things cannot continue in the DUP way of saying no to everything forever – holding us all back
April 10, 2023
Graham,
Total bullshit.
April 10, 2023
Adendum.
It transpires that the UK version of Windsor and the EU version of the same are different. Under such circumstances it is perfectly understandable that Unionism in NI will not be going back into Stormont to preside over the breakup of the UK.
April 10, 2023
If China threatens or invades Taiwan are we going to impose a trade embargo âŠ.would this mean the end of EV Batteries and Wind-Turbines âŠthe end of net-zero as the green revolution is wholly dependent upon Chinese goods and materials
April 10, 2023
This is a very interesting and compelling piece. Our problem now though, is that the belief that you can ‘Keep upping tax rates on the enterprising and successful, apparently unaware of the history’, is not restricted to the Opposition parties, but has become central to the policies of the current Conservative leadership, otherwise Liz Truss would still be in power.
April 10, 2023
Lord Lawson to some a Marmite figure depending on which side or the political see saw you choose.
To many he was a ” what you see is what you got ” figure but above all right or wrong he was to so many a real statesman.
April 10, 2023
A Nigel Lawson is badly needed today . The Conservatives have lost their case and the public will now turn elsewhere for direction and salvation .
April 10, 2023
âThe arguments he deployed are relevant today as we consider how to carry on the great task of promoting greater prosperity for more people.â
The majority of our Parliament and ruling elites no longer wish to âpromote greater prosperity for more peopleâ.
The false science of CAGW has been used to concoct Net Zero specifically to give us expensive and intermittent rationed power, lower our living standards using impractical and expensive electrical devices, together with restrictions on travel and food.
Not only do we need more CO2 in the atmosphere to further increase plant growth and food production, but if the war against nitrogen fertilisers is not stopped the result will be mass starvation across the world.
April 10, 2023
Good article.
‘Half the car industry output had been lost in the first ten years of European membership.’ And very few of the EU fanatics online ever seem to mention that. Today, the Conservatives need to be careful that they don’t destroy the rest of our car industry – and that means that the impending ban on the sale of new ICE-powered cars should be done away with. If EVs are good enough, people will buy them, without being forced to.
April 10, 2023
Sea Warrior
Well said good old common sense
“If EVs are good enough, people will buy them, without being forced to”.
Another thing that our leaders choose to ignore
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-11954681/Electric-car-insurance-blow-going-green.html?ico=mol_desktop_money
On top of this shock from the insurance industry, the road tax on such vehicles will kick in in the next 2 years. At the moment it is all a bit like fool’s gold. Too many imponderables with no end in sight. If China kicks off in the far east where are all these vehicles going to come from? Still no concrete decisions on the safe environmental disposal of all the batteries and other electronic components. The Greens just ignore it in the hope something will turn up.
April 11, 2023
âHalf the car industry output had been lostâ and a good thing it had been as in the 70s British cars were rather awful compared to what Japan was producing. And surprise, surprise, what all subsequent developments to replace the moribund UK car industry were mainly from Japanese car companies âŠ
April 11, 2023
Hmm, because British manufacturers are rubbish at everything, aren’t they Hefner!
In my opinion, Rover was emerging with popular brands (200/400) that businesses wanted to buy or lease for their fleets in the early 1990s, Graham Day did a good job moving it upmarket. BMW didn’t like that emergence and bought them out and killed them off, keeping the mini as they didn’t have an equivalent.
April 10, 2023
“I remember being able to draft for a speech of Margaretâs…” – Yes! You were there, contributing to the great accomplishments of the best government in a generation or two. Thank you, in rather delayed retrospect.
April 10, 2023
We could do with a complete revolution in the taxation system which has become far too complicated over the last three decades. The current guidance manuals produced by HMRC run to over 200 documents and 80,000 pages !
The whole thing should be scrapped and a new taxation system devised from scratch with a specific limit on the number of pages. I would suggest 2,000 pages as a permanent upper limit.
Ideally, the basis should be a flat tax system for everyone and a matching one for businesses, however, this would raise howls of protest from the Liberal Lefties because it would not be “progressive.” I don’t subscribe to that view but it probably would prevail. However, iot would be hugely easier to administer and the country could do away with thousands of civil servants and accountants. That would certainly have a positive effect on our economy.
April 10, 2023
The transformation of the gas industry occurred well before Thatcher’s time in the late 60s under public ownership when a national gas grid was built from scratch to carry gas to local grids linked to a local town gas works in order to distribute the North Sea natural gas bonanza.
The transformation of the telecommunications industry should have occurred under public ownership when the engineers that ran it wanted to replace copper wire entirely with glass fibre and had set up two factories, one to
make the fbre cable and the other to make the switchgear. Thatcher with her petty obsession with competition
wanted to bring in American cable companies to compete with the PO. The result: the factories were sold to Japan and an industry that could have become a world leader was stillborn and we are still using copper cabling and we import the fibre based technology that our engineers invented.
Natural gas is a no brainer for power generation as the grid already existed and gas generators can respond quickly to changes in demand. There is no reason to suppose the transformation of power generation from coal to natural gas required privatisation to facilitate. Industries run by engineers are way ahead of politicians with their Arts degrees; one only has to look at politicians’ insane obsession with replacing reliable power generation with unreliable and expensive wind to realise this.
Privatisation led to the closure of the monopoly gas, electricity and telephone showrooms selling to retail consumers. But these never needed to exist in the first place. Of course, housewives should have been enabled to choose the colours of their telephones and the facilities offered by their fridges and cookers in a free market.
Reply Not so. The nationalised electricity monopoly was wedded to coal stations. Privatisation led to the gas station wave of investment. BT was keen on home produced electro mechanical switches with copper when we needed to go electronic. We were a decade behind Us telecoms with the state monopoly, but caught up with competition and private capital.
April 10, 2023
It was politicians who were wedded to coal either because they were in the pocket of the NUM or because they feared a confrontation with it, not the CEGB. It was therefore the politicians blocking the transition to gas generation not the CEGB. The issue was resolved by a long strike and the introduction of Trade Union law for the very first time about a hundred tears too late.
BT was not keen on copper at all and wanted to switch to fibre; it was the Chief Executive of GEC who liked copper-based technology because he refused to invest in new technology unless the government paid for the r&d. As I explained, earlier BT set up fibre-based technology factories to bypass the intransigence of GEC and it was Mrs Thatcher that blocked the switch to fibre at that time.
Engineers are forward looking people who like innovation but they lack the political skills of politicians because they cannot deal with illogic. Those who now own our service industries are interested in wringing every last penny out of us, especially those located abroad; they also have very little interest in capital investment.
Reply What proof have you re fibre? It never came up as an option in the work I did on this.
April 10, 2023
I would assume you were not aware of this otherwise you would have strongly advised Mrs Thatcher to consider fibre as an alternative to copper. This original article by Peter Cochrane tells the story:
https://www.computing.co.uk/opinion/3084242/general-election-fibre-networks
Peter Cochrane was CTO at BT at the time of the decision on fibre and has his own website so you could verify the story with him:
https://www.petercochrane.com/
Reply I cannot see the comments on fibre research in these links. I can assure you there was no bid for cap ex for fibre, no fibre plan, no issues raised by BT over fibre during privatisation discussions and decisions when I was at No 10. BT could have launched fibre on privatisation and raised any capital it needed.
April 11, 2023
This is a version of the story that is not behind a paywall in an interview with Peter Cochrane:
https://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/how-the-uk-lost-the-broadband-race-in-1990-1224784
Was there a flaw in decision taking at the very end of Mrs Thatcher’s premiership?
As you rightly state, BT had an open field after privatisation.
Reply Confirms my statement than when I helped her with privatisation there was no such policy. This muddled story says the fibre decision was taken in 1990 when Major was PM. It also sounds as if it was a BT management decision in a private sector BT, not a PM decision.
April 19, 2023
Yes , I’m not clear why BT would fail to discuss their plans for fibre with the Department of Trade and Industry.
April 10, 2023
Thanks to Nigel, you know what works better! But who is listening, certainly not the PM or Chancellor? Only a complete idiot would raise the rate of corporation tax from 19% to 25% & think that was going to increase the amount that comes in. Only an idiot would refuse to allow tourists to reclaim VAT on their purchases, so they go to Paris, Rome or Berlin. Only an idiot would keep raising taxes instead of cutting the cost of the government! Liz Truss’s instincts to cut tax for growth may have been right, but what a disaster she left behind when she appointed Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor. Labour’s recent disgraceful attack ads on the PM suggest they are afraid of him & that he is reaching people as an efficient & competent PM, but it is difficult to understand why? However bad Sunak/Hunt may be, Starmer/ Reeves would be worse!
April 10, 2023
Andrew Orlowski writing in the Telegraph, also sums up today’s naive situation within Government compared with Lawson
â Lord Lawson didnât very much care if he was liked, and didnât ingratiate himself with fashionable opinion.
â
âWhat a refreshing contrast to todayâs politician or policy operative. Their craving for approval was savaged by James McSweeney in The Critic last week, as the Conservative âPlease Invite Me to Dinner Brigadeâ. This was, he wrote, âa caucus best defined by an obsessive desire to be liked in London media circles and bitter opposition to the core values of their votersâ.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/04/10/net-zero-subsidies-are-a-disaster-for-britain/
April 10, 2023
Common philosophies come to mind. “If it aint broke don’t fix it” and “If it works, don’t change it”.
Nigel Lawson’s and Mrs T’s ideas and principles changed the country FOR THE BETTER after the disasters of the previous Labour government. From the “Sick man of Europe” to the miracle of the Iron Lady, acclaimed around the world.
After the disaster of the previous Governments over past decades, the latest men of Downing Street re-adopt the ideals that had caused the problems for Nigel Lawson. Does common sense no longer apply to our existing leadership?
April 10, 2023
As long as the DUP holds out and refuses to re-instate power sharing, Sunak can do nothing but continue direct rule.
This will continue until EU leaders see sense and drops their ridiculous demands over the negligible risk to their precious single market, or NI politicians return to Stormont for the express purpose of voting by a simple majority, to end the protocol when it is up for review in 2024/25.
What will Brussels do then ? Install border crossings or give in ?
April 10, 2023
EU leaders will never see since, but they might joint the dinosaurs. So there is hope and the DUP must hold out!
The EU have been hiding their horrendous economic position. But the Chinese are now asking âwho stands behind the Euro?â. They also made Ursula go through normal passport control – she is not the leader of a country. đđ€Ł
Iâm warming to them!
April 10, 2023
Home Office â 9th April 2023
Illegal Immigrants â 180
Boats â 4
Easter holidays in the UKâŠall free
April 11, 2023
“UK on track to be worst-performing G7 economy this year, says IMF
Newsflash: the UK is on track to be the worst-performing advanced economy this year.” source Guardian “The UK economy is on track to shrink this year and will be at the back of the worldâs major economies, the IMF warns”
John, do you think Sunak and Hunt’s Conservative party policies for this tax year are helping this to happen? We seem to have bucked the predictions of all these organisations so far, yet now we seem to be falling into line.
Someone called Bartholomew added âOver the long run, interest rates are pinned down by slow moving forces like demographics and inequality, and the IMF sees little reason to think these have been fundamentally changed since the pandemic.
More older people have died than usual. We have imported many more economically dependent migrants than ever before, we are not returning any that have been here more than five years, is all this adding to our poor inequality figures and demographics figures or are they excluded from these ‘factors and figures’. If we import people with nothing more than the clothes we are wearing then how do we ever reduce the gap equality gaps, is there a twenty year gap between them arriving and including them in the comparison figures?
“The International Monetary Fund has forecast UK GDP will shrink by 0.3% in 2023, worse than other G7 countries. Thatâs an improvement on the Fundâs forecasts three months ago, though, when the UK was expected to contract by 0.6% this year. The IMFâs World Economic Outlook, just released, predicts that the UK will then grow by 1% in 2024.”
The US, in contrast, is forecast to grow by 1.6% this year, and 1.1% in 2024. The eurozone is expected to expand by 0.8% in 2023, and accelerate to 1.4% growth next year. Germany, though, is forecast to shrink slightly, by 0.1%, in 2023, and grow by 1.1% in 2024. France (+0.7%, then 1.3%), Italy (+0.7% then 0.8%) and Spain (+1.5% then 2%) are all seen growing this year and next. As are Canada (+1.5% in both years), and Japan (+1.3% in 2023, then 1% in 2024). Even Russia is expected to grow this year (by 0.7%) and in 2024 (by 1.3%), after a 2.1% contraction last year.
Updated at 14.02 BST