Nigel Lawson

Nigel Lawson has died at the age of 91. He was the editor of The Spectator from 1966 to 1970 and then a Conservative politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1983 until 1989. Below is an article written by Lawson in 1967 on the need for 'An Alternative Economic Policy', written some 16 years before he entered No. 11 under Margaret Thatcher and was able to realise that vision. So far as the short term is concerned, it is generally agreed, right across the political board, that the state should intervene at any rate to maintain full employment, to prevent undue inflation and generally to iron out so far as is possible the fluctuations in the trade cycle. Nor is there a fundamental difference between Conservatives and Socialists about how this ought to be done.

Our lives remain dominated by the plague, aka Covid-19. The government’s handling of it — admittedly a difficult task — has not been brilliant, but no worse than the performance of its scientific and medical advisory group (no acronym has ever been less apt than Sage).  There is one obvious lesson to be learned: the lesson from Sweden. The Swedes, alone in Europe, declined to have a lockdown. The outcome, in terms of deaths and health in general, seems to have been pretty average for Europe — worse than some, better than others (including, in particular, the UK). But comparisons are difficult, given all the factors involved. However, one fact is plain. The damage to Sweden’s economy has been far less than to every other European economy.

I read Paul Collier’s article in your 23 February issue, which has just reached me in la France profonde, with interest. The principal author of Article 50 was John Kerr, aka Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. I have known John for quite a long time, and enjoyed his company: when I became chancellor in 1983 he was my principal private secretary. He explained to me some time ago, before the referendum, that the purpose of Article 50 was to make it as difficult as possible for a country to leave the European Union. A clever man, he did a good job. Nigel Lawson House of Lords, London SW1 This letter appeared in this week's magazine.

I have escaped this rather depressing election campaign by retreating to my home in la France profonde — to be precise, in Armagnac, in the heart of Gascony. My only outing, from which I have just returned, was a brief visit to New York, travelling there and back in the giant Airbus 380. The purpose of the trip was to drum up US support for the thinktank I founded in 2009, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and its campaigning arm, the Global Warming Policy Forum, in the company of our outstanding director, Benny Peiser. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, the GWPF has a global reach, and its international influence is growing.

Earlier this week, George Osborne named Lord Lawson as one of the economic thinkers who had influenced him. But the Chancellor's mentor isn't quite so impressed with some of his policies. Here's his letter from this week's Spectator on the 'anomalous aid policy' that the government is pursuing: Sir: I was glad to see the excellent Acemoglu and Robinson article (‘Why aid fails’, 25 January) and your endnote recording that David Cameron has just declared their book, Why Nations Fail, to be one of his favourites. It is indeed an important book, which is why I quoted from it extensively in a House of Lords debate on overseas development aid in 2012.

I recently did a lunchtime meeting for the Institute of Economic Affairs. They had invited me to make the case for ‘Brexit’ — the departure of Britain from the European Union — which I now believe to be highly desirable. The room was packed and the discussion was refreshingly free of the fanatics, on both sides, who normally make debates on Europe so dreary. My mind went back to an occasion exactly 50 years ago, when I was at a small private dinner in Chelsea at which the guest of honour was the then leader of the Labour party and leader of the opposition, Hugh Gaitskell. During the course of the dinner, I found myself in an increasingly heated argument with Gaitskell over whether the UK should join what was then the European Economic Community.