Nigel Lawson Quotes

You do not need to be within the single market to be able to export to the European Union, as we see from the wide range of goods on our shelves every day.

There has always been, and there always will be, an economic cycle.

I am in favour of a fully transferable allowance.

Most of the countries in the world are outside the E.U., and they are doing very nicely, thank you.

She felt Britain should not be so dependent on coal. She was in favour of building up nuclear energy to break the dependence on coal, and the main opposition to nuclear came from the environment movement. Mrs. Thatcher thought she could trap them with the carbon emissions argument.

Gradual and moderate warming brings benefits as well as incurring costs. These benefits and costs will not, of course, be felt uniformly throughout the world; the colder regions of the world will be more affected by the benefits, and the hotter regions by the costs.

Hopelessly uneconomic on any substantial scale, since it requires a conventional power back-up for when the wind stops blowing, forests of wind turbines are rightly regarded in most countries as an environmental monstrosity.

During the 1960s, and again in the 1970s, growth in manufacturing productivity in the United Kingdom was the lowest of all the seven major industrial countries in the world. During the 1980s, our annual rate of growth of output per head in manufacturing has been the highest of all the seven major industrial countries.

You don’t need to be within the single market to trade; it’s not an issue.

No one, however long they have held the post, lightly gives up the great office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Certainly I did not.

It is quite clear that history will record that Margaret Thatcher was the greatest Prime Minister this country has had since Churchill.

I have to say to the Government that you are not even getting nowhere fast – you are getting nowhere slowly.

If I really believed in Friedman’s economic theory, then I’d be quite satisfied to spend the rest of my life with a garden hose shoved down my throat, being filled with custard by representatives of the people of China.

I think that the ordinary bloke has an instinctive sense that it wouldn’t be too bad if the weather warmed up.

The heart of the matter is that the very nature of the European Union, and of this country’s relationship with it, has fundamentally changed after the coming into being of the European monetary union and the creation of the eurozone, of which – quite rightly – we are not a part.

Those who claim that to leave the E.U. would damage the City are the very same as those who in the past confidently predicted, with a classic failure of understanding, that the City would be gravely damaged if the U.K. failed to adopt the euro as its currency.

There is always, of course, a limit in a democracy as to what is politically possible, so you have to respect that limit. But in my experience, governments tend to be too timid.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

This clutching hold of the E.U. is a sign of a lack of national self-confidence – which is not healthy.

I have long argued that in the modern world, corporation tax has had its day as a major source of tax revenue.

The right kind of immigrants can benefit the British economy enormously, but no country can accept indiscriminate, unlimited immigration.

The successful conduct of economic policy is possible only if there is – and is seen to be – full agreement between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Raising the personal allowance is massively expensive. For the same amount of money, you could look at reducing the rate of tax.

The ‘in’ campaign will attempt to scare people into believing that if the U.K. were to leave, investment and jobs would move abroad. They are as wrong about that now as they were when they warned that this would happen if we did not sign up to the Euro.

A flat-rate poll tax would be politically unsustainable; even with a rebate scheme, the package would have an unacceptable impact on certain types of household.

Nothing could be further from the truth than the claim that we have a choice between cutting tax and cutting unemployment, for the two go hand in hand.

We already have a sabbatical system. It’s called opposition, and I’ve had enough of it.

In Europe, where climate change absolutism is at its strongest, the quasi-religion of greenery in general and the climate change issue in particular have filled the vacuum of organised religion, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as a form of blasphemy.