33 Facts About Norman Lamont

Norman Lamont served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1990 until 1993.

Norman Stewart Hughson Lamont was born in Lerwick, in the Shetland Islands, on 8 May 1942, where his father Daniel Lamont OBE was the islands' surgeon.

Norman Lamont was privately educated at Loretto School, Musselburgh, Scotland, and read economics at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he was Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association and President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1964.

Norman Lamont is a director of the hedge fund company RAB Capital, Balli Group plc, and he is an advisor to Rotch Property Group.

Norman Lamont is a director of a number of investment funds.

Norman Lamont stood as a candidate for Member of Parliament in the June 1970 general election for Kingston upon Hull East.

Norman Lamont was defeated by John Prescott, who went on to become Tony Blair's Deputy Prime Minister.

Two years later, on 4 May 1972, Norman Lamont won a by-election to become MP for Kingston-upon-Thames.

Norman Lamont served in successive governments under Margaret Thatcher and John Major for a total of 14 years, in the Departments of Energy, Industry, Defence and the Treasury.

Norman Lamont remained as Chief Secretary to the Treasury under Major's Chancellorship.

Norman Lamont eventually slammed the phone down on Lawson in temper, though he later wrote to Lawson to offer an apology.

Norman Lamont replaced Major as Chancellor in Major's new Cabinet, thereby inheriting Major's exchange rate policy.

Newly appointed as Chancellor, Norman Lamont therefore supported Major's idea of Britain negotiating an opt-out from the single currency.

Norman Lamont decided that the best way of securing the first two of his negotiating objectives was for Britain to draw up a protocol listing those parts of the treaty from which Britain would be exempted.

When Wim Kok, the Dutch finance minister chairing the finance ministers' negotiations at Maastricht, decided that the meeting should review the British opt-out line-by-line, Norman Lamont said the text was not negotiable.

Later that month, at a press conference in the garden of the British embassy in Washington, DC in response to a question as to why he appeared so cheerful, Norman Lamont commented that it was a beautiful morning, adding, "My wife said she heard me singing in the bath this morning," a response which led to the story that he was singing in the bath with happiness at leaving the ERM.

In June 1993, the first month after Norman Lamont had left the Treasury, Britain recorded its lowest monthly rate of inflation since February 1964.

Norman Lamont replied by quoting the Edith Piaf song "Non, je ne regrette rien", a dry response which raised a laugh at the press conference but which played poorly when quoted later on the television that evening and afterwards.

When called to defend him on Newsnight his friend the former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt caused further merriment by claiming that Norman Lamont could do an excellent impersonation of a Scops owl.

Major and Norman Lamont agree that Norman Lamont had offered his resignation immediately after Black Wednesday and that Major pressed him to remain in office.

Norman Lamont came to the view that Major had sought his survival in office as a firebreak against the criticism of the ERM policy rebounding on himself.

Norman Lamont supported Redwood's campaign, which was managed by David Evans MP.

Norman Lamont is the current vice president of the euro-sceptic Bruges Group.

Later that year at the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth, Norman Lamont addressed a fringe meeting of the Selsdon Group.

Norman Lamont rejected the argument made by Douglas Hurd, the foreign secretary, who had claimed that the debate in Europe was turning Britain's way.

Norman Lamont lost the contest for the candidacy for the new seat to the incumbent Surbiton MP Richard Tracey.

Norman Lamont then embarked on a high-profile search for a new constituency and was eventually adopted as the Conservative candidate for the new seat of Harrogate and Knaresborough in Yorkshire.

The move was seen as an attempt to parachute in an outsider, with Norman Lamont seeming like an opportunist next to the Liberal Democrat candidate, Phil Willis, a local teacher and long-time local politician.

Norman Lamont was not recommended for a peerage in John Major's resignation honours, but the following year William Hague recommended him, and Lamont was made a life peer as Baron Lamont of Lerwick, of Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, on 24 July 1998.

Norman Lamont joined with Margaret Thatcher in defending Pinochet, calling him a "good and brave and honourable soldier".

Norman Lamont attempted to be selected as a candidate for the 1999 European Parliament election, but was unsuccessful.

In June 2007, Norman Lamont became honorary patron of the Oxford University History Society, one of the university's largest societies, and he was, from 1996 to 2008, chairman of Le Cercle, a secret anti-Communist group which meets bi-annually in Washington, DC.

In February 2015, Norman Lamont resigned as a director of Phorm Corporation Limited, an internet personalisation technology company.