42 Facts About Nigel Lawson

Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, was a British politician and journalist.

Nigel Lawson was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in June 1983 and served until his resignation in October 1989.

In both Cabinet posts, Lawson was a key proponent of Thatcher's policies of privatisation of several key industries.

Nigel Lawson was a backbencher from 1989 until he retired in 1992 and sat in the House of Lords from 1992 to his further retirement in 2022.

Nigel Lawson remained active in politics as the president of Conservatives for Britain, a campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, and was a prominent critic of the EU.

Nigel Lawson served as the chairman of the think tank The Global Warming Policy Foundation and was an active supporter of Vote Leave.

Nigel Lawson was born on 11 March 1932 to a non-Orthodox Jewish family living in Hampstead, London.

Nigel Lawson was a great-nephew of the pianist Myra Hess.

Nigel Lawson was educated at Westminster School in London, and won a mathematics scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a first-class honours degree in philosophy, politics and economics.

For two years from 1954, Nigel Lawson carried out his National Service as a Royal Navy officer, during which time he commanded the fast-patrol boat HMS Gay Charger.

Nigel Lawson progressed to become City editor of The Sunday Telegraph in 1961, where he introduced Jim Slater's Capitalist investing column.

In 1963, Nigel Lawson was recruited by Conservative Central Office to assist with speech-writing for prime ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas-Home in the lead-up to the 1964 general election.

Nigel Lawson contested the seat unsuccessfully at the 1970 general election, before becoming Member of Parliament for Blaby in Leicestershire in February 1974, holding the seat until he retired at the 1992 general election.

In 1977, while an opposition whip, Nigel Lawson co-ordinated tactics with rebellious government backbenchers Jeff Rooker and Audrey Wise to secure legislation providing for the automatic indexation of tax thresholds to prevent the tax burden being increased by inflation.

Nigel Lawson was a key proponent of the Thatcher government's privatisation policy.

The early years of Nigel Lawson's chancellorship were associated with tax reform.

Critics of Nigel Lawson assert that a combination of the abandonment of monetarism, the adoption of a de facto exchange-rate target of 3 Deutsche Marks to the pound, and excessive fiscal laxity unleashed an inflationary spiral.

Insofar as Nigel Lawson acknowledged policy errors, he attributed them to a failure to raise interest rates during 1986 and considered that had Margaret Thatcher not vetoed the UK joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in November 1985 it might have been possible to adjust to these beneficial changes in the arena of microeconomics with less macroeconomics turbulence.

Nigel Lawson ascribed the difficulty of conducting monetary policy to Goodhart's law.

Nigel Lawson reflected on the 1987 general election in his memoir and wrote that the 1987 manifesto was not thought through properly and if it had not been for the economic growth of the country at the time, then the manifesto would have been a disaster because "as it was, it was merely an embarrassment".

Nigel Lawson opposed the introduction of the Community Charge as a replacement for the previous rating system for the local financing element of local government revenue.

Nigel Lawson's dissent was confined to deliberations within the Cabinet, where he found few allies and where he was over-ruled by the Prime Minister and by the ministerial team of the department responsible.

Nigel Lawson was succeeded in the office of chancellor by John Major.

On 1 July 1992, Nigel Lawson was given a life peerage as Baron Nigel Lawson of Blaby, of Newnham in the County of Northamptonshire.

In 1996, Nigel Lawson appeared on the BBC satirical and topical quiz show Have I Got News for You, in which he secured his team a last-minute victory.

Nigel Lawson occasionally appeared as a guest on his daughter Nigella's cookery shows.

Nigel Lawson served on the advisory board of the Conservative magazine Standpoint.

Nigel Lawson argued that "economic gains [from leaving the EU] would substantially outweigh the costs".

Nigel Lawson was involved with the climate change scepticism movement and believed that the impact of man-made global warming had been exaggerated.

In 2004, along with six others, Nigel Lawson wrote a letter to The Times opposing the Kyoto Protocol and claiming that there were substantial scientific uncertainties surrounding climate change.

Nigel Lawson said that Kyoto's approach was "wrong-headed" and called on the IPCC to be "shut down".

In 2008, Nigel Lawson published a book expanding on his 2006 lecture to the CPS, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming.

Nigel Lawson argued the case that, although global warming is happening, the impact of these changes will be relatively moderate rather than apocalyptic.

Nigel Lawson criticised those "alarmist" politicians and scientists who predict catastrophe unless urgent action is taken.

On 23 November 2009, Nigel Lawson became chairman of a new think tank, The Global Warming Policy Foundation, a registered education charity, involved in promoting climate change denial.

Ward criticised Nigel Lawson for repeating in a 2010 BBC radio debate that Antarctic ice volumes were unchanged even after his error was highlighted by his opponent, Professor Kevin Anderson.

Nigel Lawson's son, Dominic Nigel Lawson, is a climate change sceptic, taking a similar viewpoint as his father in his columns in the Independent on Sunday.

Nigel Lawson was a critic of David Cameron's coalition government economic policy, describing spending cuts consultation plans as a "PR ploy".

Nigel Lawson said that an unintended consequence of the 1986 Big Bang saw investment banks merge with high street banks and put their depositors' savings at risk.

In 1955 Nigel Lawson married Vanessa Mary Addison Salmon, granddaughter of the Lyons Corner House chairman Alfred Salmon, and had four children:.

In retirement, Nigel Lawson divided his time between his flat in London and a neoclassical farmhouse in Vic-Fezensac in the Gers department of France.

Nigel Lawson died at his home in Eastbourne from bronchopneumonia on 3 April 2023, at the age of 91.