Nigel Lawson dies: The life of Thatcher’s chancellor, from political clashes to the Big Boom and climate scepticism

Published

2 years ago

April 3, 2023

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Nigel Lawson, chancellor to Margaret Thatcher, has died at the age of 91.

He leaves behind five of his six children, including TV chef Nigella Lawson and journalist Dominic Lawson. One of his daughters, Thomasina, died aged 32.

Born in Hampstead, northwest London, on 11 March 1932, the son of the owner of a tea-trading firm climbed his way to the top of British politics after an education at Westminster School and Oxford University.

His political life started at Oxford, where he did Philosophy, Politics and Economics – like many other politicians – but he began his working life carrying out national service as a Royal Navy officer.

Lord Lawson, as he was to become, then became a financial journalist, writing for the Financial Times and The Sunday Telegraph, before becoming editor of The Spectator.

After 14 years as a journalist, in 1970 he stood to become an MP, unsuccessfully, for the Eton and Slough seat before eventually winning the now-defunct Leicestershire constituency of Blaby four years later.

When the Conservatives won the election in 1979 under Mrs Thatcher, she made him financial secretary to the Treasury and her policies at the time clearly reflected his influence.

She then promoted him to energy secretary, where he helped prepare for what he called “inevitable” full-scale strikes in the coal industry, which had been nationalised by Labour prime minister Clement Attlee.

But it was as chancellor that Mr Lawson ensured he would go down in the history books.

Tax cuts, the Big Bang and the Lawson Boom

The second longest-serving chancellor after Gordon Brown, Mr Lawson was key to Mrs Thatcher’s economic policies – and success.

After getting the job in 1983 he pushed ahead with tax reforms, reducing corporation taxes and lowering National Insurance contributions for the lower-paid, while extending the VAT base.

From 1986, his public image grew after he reduced the standard rate of personal income tax and unemployment began to fall.

He also managed to turn around government finances from a budget deficit of £10.5bn in 1983 to a surplus of £3.9bn in 1988 and £4.1bn in 1989.

However, the government’s current account deficit increased from below 1% GDP to almost 5% in three years.

Mr Lawson managed to honour his promise to bring taxation rates down, with the basic rate going from 30% to 25%, and the top tax rate from 60% to 40%. He also removed other higher rates so nobody paid above 40% in personal tax.

One of his major triumphs was the Big Bang of 1986, which saw the City’s financial markets deregulated and London strengthened as a financial capital – but in 2010, he admitted the “unintended consequence” of that was the 2007 financial crisis.

He even had a period of economic growth named after him. The Lawson Boom saw the UK economy on the up after 1986, with unemployment halved.

However, that led to a rise in inflation to 8% in 1988 and interest rates doubled to 15% within 18 months, with critics accusing Mr Lawson of unleashing an inflationary spiral due to his policies.

In his 1992 memoir, written just after he stepped down as an MP, Mr Lawson admitted the 1987 manifesto was not properly thought through and if it had not been for the economic growth, the manifesto would have been a disaster.

“As it was, it was merely an embarrassment,” he said.

Clashes with Thatcher

While he was Mrs Thatcher’s right-hand man, the pair did not always see eye-to-eye and he was overruled in cabinet when he opposed introducing a poll tax to replace local government financing.

There was also the now-infamous 1988 budget, which took nearly two hours for Mr Lawson to announce as there were continuous interruptions and protests from opposition parties.

The then-depute leader of the Scottish National Party, Alex Salmond, was suspended from the Commons for his constant interruptions and MPs voted against amending the law bill.

Mrs Thatcher and her chancellor also clashed over the exchange-rate mechanism (ERM) membership in 1985, with Mr Lawson – ironically, as he became a Brexiteer – believing membership was the only way forward to help convince the markets the UK was committed to fiscal discipline.

It proved to be one of Mrs Thatcher’s most tumultuous meetings with her senior ministers as she single-handedly faced them down after Mr Lawson had spoken separately to all of the ministers present to persuade them to ambush her.

Mr Lawson later said he had considered resigning after she said their arguments did not convince her, but he was dissuaded by colleagues. Mrs Thatcher was persuaded to sign up to the ERM five years later by Mr Lawson’s successor, John Major.

The prime minister’s relationship with her chancellor took another dive when she re-employed economist Alan Walters in 1989 as her personal economic adviser, with Mr Lawson at loggerheads with them over the ERM.

He threatened to resign if Mrs Thatcher did not sack Mr Walters over his support of the ERM. Mrs Thatcher wrote in a private memo that was “absurd” and urged him to rethink – and Mr Lawson quit.

National Archive files released in 2017 revealed the extent Mr Walters was briefing against Mr Lawson, including telling Mrs Thatcher that Mr Lawson’s position over the ERM was having a devastating impact on the UK economy.

Mr Lawson’s resignation was seen as the beginning of the end for Mrs Thatcher, with her foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe resigning shortly after – and Mrs Thatcher resigned in 1990 after Michael Heseltine decided to challenge her for leadership of the Conservative Party.

Post-Thatcher

Mr Lawson remained as a backbencher until 1992, when he was elevated to the House of Lords with a life peerage, and was known as Lord Lawson of Blaby.

Months after he stood down as an MP, he lost five stone after his doctor told him his knee problems would not stop if he continued to carry the weight.

It dramatically changed his appearance and he published The Nigel Lawson Diet Book, which became a best seller.

Previously 17 stone and 5ft 9, he had been an easy target for political cartoonists – although it did not bother him – and he admitted after losing weight: “I was certainly a fat man.

“It came up gradually, and by the time I was chancellor, certainly, that was the thing the cartoonists seized on; that was part of the image – no doubt about it.”

Mr Lawson used his time away from the Commons to occasionally appear as a guest on daughter Nigella’s cookery shows.

He also served on the advisory board of the Conservative magazine Standpoint.

Two wives, six children

Mr Lawson was married twice. His first wife was former ballet dancer Vanessa Salmon with whom he had Dominic (the journalist), Thomasina (who died of breast cancer aged 32), Nigella (the TV chef) and Horatia. After they divorced, Ms Salmon died of liver cancer aged 48.

His second wife was former Commons researcher Therese Maclear, who he married the same year he divorced Ms Salmon. They had son Tom and daughter Emily before they divorced in 2008.

In 2011, he found love again at the age of 79 with 42-year-old Dr Tina Jennings, a former banker who was previously married to New Zealand’s richest man.

However, they split up two years later, with Dr Jennings reportedly finding it hard to go regularly to France, which Mr Lawson did every weekend.

Controversial support for Brexit

In 2009, Mr Lawson was caught up in the parliamentary expenses scandal after he was accused of claiming £16,000 in overnight allowances by registering his farmhouse in Gascony, southwest France, as his main residence.

In 2013, the former chancellor pushed for the UK to leave the EU and ahead of the 2016 referendum he was appointed chairman of the Vote Leave campaign.

At the time, he was living in France and in 2018 started to apply for his official French residency card.

His critics accused him of hypocrisy for living in France yet campaigning for the UK to leave the EU, but he said he did not believe the issue of Britons living in other EU countries was a big problem in the Brexit negotiations.

In 2019, Mr Lawson returned to live in the UK after putting his Gascony mansion on the market. He said it was to be close to his children and grandchildren.

Climate scepticism

In opposition to Mrs Thatcher, who helped put climate change on the agenda, Mr Lawson was very sceptical of the concept and denied global warming is taking place to such a large degree as many scientists say.

He wrote a letter in 2004 criticising the Kyoto Protocol and claiming there were substantial scientific uncertainties.

As a member of the House of Lords Economics Affairs Select Committee, he carried out an inquiry into climate change in 2005 and recommended the Treasury take a more active role in climate policy.

The report said there was a mismatch between the economic costs and the benefits of climate policy – which kicked off a tussle between him and Michael Grubb, chief economist of the Carbon Trust.

He contributed to the 2007 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle and in 2008 published a book called An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming.

In the book, he admitted global warming is happening and will have negative consequences but said the impact of those changes will be moderate rather than apocalyptic, and criticised “alarmist” politicians and scientists.

He was heavily denounced by climate scientists and the UK’s chief scientific adviser at the time, Sir John Beddington, who privately told Mr Lawson he had “incorrect” and “misleading” claims in the book.

But that did not stop him airing his views, and in 2009 he launched a new thinktank called The Global Warming Policy Foundation.

His journalist son, Dominic Lawson, is also a climate change sceptic.

UK

A remarkable step by the government – and Donald Trump, China and Reform UK have all played their part

Published

9 hours ago

April 12, 2025

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A remarkable step by the government - and Donald Trump, China and Reform UK have all played their part

When the sun sets on Scunthorpe this Saturday, the town’s steelworks will likely have a new boss – Jonathan Reynolds.

The law that parliament will almost certainly approve this weekend hands the business secretary the powers to direct staff at British Steel, order raw materials and, crucially, keep the blast furnaces at the plant open.

This is not full nationalisation.

But it is an extraordinary step.

The Chinese firm Jingye will – on paper – remain the owner of British Steel.

But the UK state will insert itself into the corporate set-up to legally override the wishes of the multinational company.

A form of martial law invoked and applied to private enterprise.

That will come at a cost to the taxpayer.

Follow latest: Live politics updates

No number has been specified, but there are wages to pay and orders to make at a site estimated to already be losing £700,000 a day.

There is also clear frustration in government at how the Chinese owners have engaged in negotiations around modernising the Scunthorpe site.

“Jingye have not been forthright throughout this process”, said the business secretary in his department’s official announcement about the new laws.

Time is so tight because of the nature of the steel-making process.

Once switched off, blast furnaces are very hard to turn back on.

If this had happened in Scunthorpe – as seemed likely in a matter of days – then it would have been game over.

This move keeps the show on the road and opens up more time for talks over the long-term future of the plant.

While the official line in Whitehall is that “all options are on the table”, nationalisation seems increasingly likely.

That would need more legislation, if it was done – as seems likely – without the approval of the current owner.

Finding an alternative commercial partner has not been ruled out, but one is not waiting in the wings either.

As for what that long-term future looks like, with just five years of life left in the Scunthorpe blast furnaces, modernisation is inevitable.

Port Talbot’s plant saw its blast furnaces closed last year amid a switch to the more environmentally friendly electric arc furnaces and a loss of thousands of jobs.

Political figures in Wales are now questioning why nationalisation wasn’t on the table for this site.

The response from government is that the deal was done by the previous Tory administration and the owners of the South Wales site agreed to the terms.

But there is also a sense that this decision over British Steel is being shaped by the domestic and international political context.

Labour came to power promising to revitalise left-behind communities and inject a sense of pride back into places still reeling from the loss of traditional industry.

With that in mind, it would be politically intolerable to see the UK’s last two blast furnaces closed and thousands of jobs lost in a relatively deprived part of the country.

Reform UK’s position of pushing for full and immediate nationalisation is also relevant, given the party is in electoral pursuit of Labour in many parts of the country where decline in manufacturing has been felt most acutely.

The geo-political situation is perhaps more pressing though.

Just look at the strength of the prime minister’s language in his Downing Street address – “our economic and national security are all on the line”.

The government’s reaction to the turmoil caused by President Donald Trump’s pronouncements on tariffs and security has been to emphasise the need to increase domestic resilience in both business and defence.

Becoming the only G7 nation unable to produce virgin steel at a time when globalisation appears to be in retreat hardly fits with that narrative.

It would also present serious practical questions about the ability of the UK to produce steel for defence and the broader switch to green energy production.

Then there is the intriguing subplot around US-China trade.

While this decision is separate from discussions with the White House on tariffs, one can imagine how a UK move to wrestle control of a site of national importance from its Chinese owner might go down with a US president currently engaged in a fierce trade war with Beijing.

This is a remarkable step from the government, but it is more a punctuation mark than a full answer.

The tension between manufacturing and decarbonisation remains, as do the challenges presented by a global economy appearing to fragment significantly.

But one thing is for sure.

As a political parable about changes to traditional industry and the challenges of globalisation, the saga of British Steel is hard to beat.

UK

Teachers in England gearing up for potential strike action

Published

9 hours ago

April 12, 2025

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Teachers in England gearing up for potential strike action

Teachers in England are once again gearing up for potential strike action after an overwhelming majority of National Education Union (NEU) members rejected the government’s latest pay offer.

In an electronic ballot, 93.7% of respondents turned down the proposed 2.8% pay rise, labelling it inadequate and unfunded.

If the pay offer had been accepted, schools would have had to find the money from existing budgets to pay for the increase – with many saying they are already overstretched.

Some 83% of teachers said they would be willing to take industrial action to secure a better deal.

The vote, which included 134,487 teachers in state schools across England (a turnout of 47.2%), was a clear signal that union leaders are not backing down.

In a statement after the vote, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said a move towards industrial action by teaching unions “would be indefensible”, given work being done to increase school attendance and urged the NEU to “put children first”.

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede said years of what he called “real-terms pay cuts” had left the profession in crisis.

He also took aim at the government’s decision not to fund the offer centrally.

“This will only make things worse,” Mr Kebede said. “Our members tell us every day of the desperate state their schools are in due to lack of funding.”

The union says the offer falls below inflation and lags behind private-sector wage growth.

But critics argue strike threats will only cause more damage to students still recovering from the disruption of the pandemic.

The union’s national executive is due to meet at its Harrogate conference next week, and all eyes will be on whether full-blown strike action will be announced.

UK

Protests in ‘ghost town’ where £400m ships don’t fit the harbour

Published

9 hours ago

April 12, 2025

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Protests in 'ghost town' where £400m ships don't fit the harbour

Those unfamiliar with Scotland’s so-called ‘ferry fiasco’ would barely believe it is a true story.

The new vessels cost quadruple their original price tag, one was delivered seven years late, the other is still being built, and both are too big to fit the main harbour for their daily journeys to and from the Isle of Arran.

But in this latest chapter of the scandal, the unbelievable is very much part of the script. And, as Sky News has been hearing, the consequences are brutal.

“It is completely and utterly nuts,” one exasperated campaigner exclaims as we stand overlooking the deserted Ardrossan Harbour on Scotland’s mainland.

Ardrossan, on the Ayrshire coast, has been the main port for the ferry service to and from Arran for decades. It is the quickest, most efficient route.

But the 30-year-old ferry serving the islands for generations is failing and two new bespoke-designed ones were ordered, with them due to enter service from 2017.

The original £100m cost ballooned to £400m, the shipyard was bought by taxpayers amid financial crisis, one vessel finally started carrying passengers in January 2025 while the other is still being built.

And to add insult to injury, both are too big for Ardrossan Harbour’s jetty to cope with and require an £80m upgrade.

In the meantime, services are being diverted along the coast to Troon.

Protest as tensions rise in ‘ghost town’

Ardrossan was promised it would remain the primary port for connectivity to Arran. But now the community is in limbo and is fearing for its future.

Christine Cowie, from Save Ardrossan Harbour, told Sky News: “It is completely and utterly nuts.

“Why anybody would commission a ferry which doesn’t fit the harbour for the route it is meant for is crazy. I cannot understand it at all.

“Ardrossan is like an extension of Arran. A lot of people come here to the dentist and use other businesses they don’t have on the island which are losing money since the ferries have gone away.”

A botched design process, mismanagement and a string of costly blunders have given the project the label of one of the biggest procurement disasters in the history of Scottish devolution.

People from Arran are joining Ardrossan campaigners on the mainland for a protest on Saturday. Hundreds are expected to gather as tensions boil over.

The group’s chairwoman Frances Gilmour said Ardrossan has become a “ghost town”.

She said: “It is so quiet. It is spooky. It’s frankly a disgrace. Businesses are suffering.

“Economically, this is the route. This is the economic route. We have the infrastructure. We just need the berths fixed.”

The 33-year-old MV Caledonian Isles, which has been away over the winter for extensive repairs, is expected to return to Ardrossan next month. But locals question how reliable and sustainable that vessel is.

On the edge of the once bustling harbour carpark is the Bute MOT garage.

Manager Scott Revans says they rely on customers from Arran previously hopping off the ferry and leaving their car for repairs at their centre.

He told Sky News: “The harbour is a ghost town. We’d get the passing trade doing whatever customers need from batteries to punctures. It has had an impact on us.”

Could taxpayers pick up the bill?

Ardrossan Harbour is owned by private company Peel Ports.

The Scottish government is currently exploring buying the port, but the talks are a secret, with campaigners feeling left in the dark.

No one involved in the discussions would answer questions from Sky News about when they expect to alert communities to the next steps.

A spokesman for the Scottish government agency Transport Scotland said: “We absolutely understand people and communities’ views in favour of retaining Ardrossan as the mainland port and remain committed to ensuring the Arran ferry service is fit for the future.

“The Scottish government has instructed officials… to explore options on purchasing Ardrossan Port.

“We will of course update parliament once there is progress and an outcome to report, however, it would be inappropriate to get in the way of these complex and sensitive discussions.”

Jim McSporran, port director at Peel Ports Clydeport, said: “Peel Ports Group welcomes the Scottish government’s statement that it intends to explore the potential purchase of Ardrossan Harbour.

“Regardless of the outcome of this process, our willingness to invest in the harbour remains steadfast. We take comfort that the port continues to operate this lifeline route and that it remains the port of choice for the people and businesses of Arran and Ardrossan.”