Margaret Thatcher called him “impregnable” and, despite their differences, reserved a place for him in the pantheon of “Tory rebels”. Rishi Sunak has his picture on his desk. Boris Johnson called him “the bold and authentic flame of free market conservatism.” Liz Truss “Political Giant of the 20th Century”. The current Treasury Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said he was difficult to replace. His successor in the British Parliament, Andrew Robatan, called him “the titan of the intellect and the post-war world”.

Lord Nigel Lawson, who died yesterday, Monday, at the age of 91, linked his name with The Thatcherism of the 1980s, with the Big Bang of the London Stock Exchange, with bold tax cuts, with the privatization of expensive state-owned enterprises and his transformation from Europeanist to Euroskeptic.. After all, the former finance minister is called the “prophet of Brexit”. Conservative Britons remember him as the man who turned London into an “enviable” financial center of the world.

He was born in 1932 in Hampstead, London to a Jewish family. His father, Ralph, was a tea merchant, and his mother, Joan Elizabeth Davis, came from a family of stockbrokers. He went to the same school as his father, Westminster School, and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford.

After completing his service in the Royal Navy, Lord Lawson took up journalism. He began his career at the Financial Times, moved to the Sunday Telegraph and became editor of the Spectator before immersing himself in politics.

Already in 1979, after the departure of Margaret Thatcher from the post of Prime Minister of Great Britain, Nigel Lawson assumed minor ministerial duties in the Treasury. But, as they say, work and his insistence on monetary policy and economic reform made him stand out among members of the financial staff of the Iron Lady.

Fuck thatcher

Thatcher’s re-election in 1983 reserved a ministerial seat for him that would make him not only one of the longest-serving Treasury ministers, but also one whose Thatcher policies would support what were seen as the most important economic, mainly fiscal, the reforms of the decade of the 80s, which they literally separated British citizens.

“Now I began to share Nigel’s dissenting opinion of himself,” was probably iron lady’s bitter comment in her memories. Besides, she wasn’t afraid of him—he wasn’t a Tory pipe maker, he wasn’t even a member of their ranks at the university, so he wasn’t, so to speak, competitive with her.

The 1984 budget was the first step in demonstrating Nigel Lawson’s determination and commitment to the core principles of Thatcher’s conservatism, which crystallized what was called “neoliberalism”: “Society – there is no such thing. There are people, men and women, families, and no government can do anything except through individuals, and people look at themselves first, ”the Iron Lady herself said in 1987.

Cut income and business taxes, deficits, inflation. At the same time, he was pushing Thatcher to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), whether or not it became Eurosceptic and Brexit supporter. It was he who caused the “Big Bang” of the London Stock Exchange: its release from the regulatory bodies of the state. It was he who created the coal reserves after the British miners’ strikes of 1984-1985, which suspended their mobilization.

However, according to the Financial Times, Thatcher prevented him from lowering the interest rate on mortgages, which could soften the subsequent boom in house prices.

And in 1987, as a theorist of economic neoliberalism, he did, as it is written, Scroll through the Economic Manifesto of Laborleading Thatcher to her third election victory that year.

In the context of iron Thatcherism, he is seen as something of an intellectual and, at the same time, a practical person. However, constant disagreements with his prime minister, mainly on European issues, and interference in his work by her economic adviser Alan Walters led to his resignation in 1989 after an ultimatum: either he or I. However, on the day of Lawson’s resignation, Walters also resigned.

Indeed, the resignation of Lawson, and later Foreign Secretary Thatcher and Lawson’s predecessor in the Treasury, Sir Geoffrey Howey, is said to have led to the resignation of the Iron Lady in 1990..

“Madrid ambush” and the German mark

In fact, he became famous, along with Howie, thanks to her. “Madrid Ambush”when at the EU summit in the Spanish capital in June 1989 they forced her to announce that the UK would join the ERM “subject to certain conditions”. Of course, the Iron Lady felt not only trapped, but also betrayed.

However, since 1986, according to the Financial Times, Lawson began to make significant mistakes. Sterling weakened after the fall in oil prices. At the same time, he was disappointed with Thatcher’s abandonment of the ERM, believing that it would strengthen the credibility of the government’s anti-inflationary policy.

The decision he made “tie” the pound sterling to three German markswithout informing her prime minister, infuriated the Iron Lady, who in her memoirs wondered: “How can I ever trust him again?”.

However, for the overall picture of the British economy, Lord Lawson linked his name to the recession that followed. As the London Times wrote, his tax cuts and increasingly loose monetary policy fueled the “Lawson Boom” that culminated in a deep recession and economic crisis in the early 1990s.

He blamed official statistics for the boom that bore his name, arguing that they covered up the extent of the boom, but Thatcher argued that his monetary policy towards the Deutsche Mark had created subsequent inflation.

And while the Big Bang turned the city into the world’s leading financial center, it also contributed to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

Climate change denial

Over the years, Nigel Lawson – in addition to Euroscepticism – he has also developed theories against global warming and climate change in general.as president of the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He was accused of not caring about the future of the planet, while he countered that with so many children and grandchildren, he was probably one of the people who cared about him the most.

In addition, in 2017 he stated that “Extreme weather events have always happened. They come and go”.

Post-political career

And he never stopped doing politics, albeit at a … post-political level. His resignation in 1989 may have marked, according to the Financial Times, the end of his cutting-edge political career, and he resigned from Parliament ahead of the 1992 election, assuming the title of Baron Lawson of Blaby, but he held various senior positions at companies such as Barclays , while his name was mentioned as Governor of the Bank of England in 1993.

In recent years, he retired to the south-west of France. He stated in 2012 that “the idea that because you’re old, you’re completely selfish and makes you think, ‘I only have five or ten years to live, so I don’t care.’ Well it couldn’t be more of a lie“.