Nigel Lawson Quotes

The belief that the laws of economics and the judgements of the markets can be suspended by clever people — and Nigel Lawson was one of the cleverest people in British politics — is a perpetual temptation to folly. That folly cost us dear. But then the idea that other clever people — and Jacques Delors was one of the cleverest people I met in European politics — can build their Tower of Babel on the uneven foundation of ancient nations, different languages and diverse economies is still more dangerous. Work on that shaky construction is still proceeding.

And so the nature of modern capitalism is exposed: a publicly subsidized racket, where the real ‘scroungers’ are to be found not at the bottom of society, but at the top. The great fire sale of state assets includes even an institution once described by a Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, as the ‘closest the English have to a religion’ – namely, the NHS.