You don't get many politicians like Nigel Lawson. Perhaps the best thing about him was his intellectual self-sufficiency, which made him more immune than most from some of the typical politicians' permanent, minute-by-minute angst that they might not be perfectly-enough positioned (vis-à-vis their party's leadership, or their meejah image, or whatever else they worry about) for career advancement. This leaves them always looking over shoulders - their own shoulders, and those of the people they are talking to - checking out the movements of the Important People in the room, metaphorically and actually. This deeply unattractive paranoia, Lawson avoided better than most.
But it's all relative, and he did care. When he first entered the Cabinet as Energy secretary, after the pathetic efforts in that job of David Howell (now there was a paranoid shoulder-checker par excellence), he was overjoyed, and held a sustained round of little parties in his splendid new office for all his friends, showing off like crazy. He was also very circumspect in his dealings with Mrs T, with whom he disagreed on a lot of economic policy but whose favour he wished to court and to retain - even when he was at the height of his supposed invulnerability.
A striking example was mortgage interest relief, which everybody knew was a pointless, indeed self-defeating economic distortion which merely served to increase house prices. Geoffrey Howe, his predecessor as Chancellor, had cautiously mentioned the notion that it might be sensible to phase it out, only to be firmly beaten around the ears by Thatcher, for whom economic logic played a very lowly second fiddle to promoting (even if fallaciously) the idea of sustaining "her" voters in their aspirations. Lawson, equally keen to scrap the subsidy, decided it wasn't on, while privately decrying it. When, at length, he found the bottle to reform just one aspect of this nonsense, he screwed it up tactically by delaying its introduction after the announcement, causing exactly the baleful impact on house prices that theory indicated it would.
I'd be interested to see an authoritative list of what enduring economic reforms his many admirers would claim for him. My starter towards this little project: he played an important strategic role in defeating Scargill's epic strike of '84-85, both before and during. That's not a small achievement: before Scargill was so soundly defeated the whole of the Left in the UK intuitively felt that Thatcher's regime was only there on sufferance: "Just wait till the miners go out ...".
Other candidates for the list of achievements? He certainly played a modest part in opening up the energy markets to competition, starting from the dreadful monopoly arrangements then in place. But even on that he was half-hearted, despite being wholly persuaded intellectually of the merits of this long overdue measure. It wasn't until John Major's often derided regime that serious progress was made, with a degree of success that made Lawson's (and Peter Walker's) efforts look like very uncertain baby steps. A genuinely confident heavyweight proponent of free markets in his position could have moved much farther and faster.
Feel free to add to this equivocal story BTL !
ND
24 comments:
"mortgage interest relief, which everybody knew was a pointless, indeed self-defeating economic distortion which merely served to increase house prices"
We have all noticed the increased affordability of housing since the abolition of Miras ;-)
"opening up the energy markets to competition, starting from the dreadful monopoly arrangements then in place"
We have all noticed the increased affordability of energy since the opening of the markets to competition ;-)
So far you're not making a great case for capitalism ;-)
Re Scargill, it's amazing what a 180 degree shift todays green/left has performed since the days of "Coal not Dole". Back then miners were proletarian heroes for the middle class students and an NUM donkey jacket was a serious fashion garment (as it was in the 70s too).
Now opening a coal mine (as proposed near Whitehaven and just off the Coast To Coast walking route) is considered on a par with opening a gulag.
"It's amazing what a 180 degree shift todays green/left has performed since the days of "Coal not Dole". "
Just a good example of how the Left hijack a legitimate cause to give them a leg up in their never ending lust for power. And then when the cause is no longer of use towards their goal of domination they drop it like a hot potato. Hence the working man is now a hated gammon, feminists are now TERFs and I suspect that gays and lesbians are teetering on the edge of oblivion now that 'trans rights' is the vehicle the Left wants to take them into power.
When union barons really were barons and brought to power by false mandates.
They needed sorting out for sure and were defeated but I never imagined that Britain could end up looking so Marxist.
The shift away from the hurly burly of coal contributed to this. The destruction of the male role in the family, the creation of *toxic* masculinity. The dependency of malign foreign sources for electric power, the rise of the Greenists and the trans without a male working class base to oppose it all.
I'd wager that those miners were more conservative than Rishi Sunak or Theresa May.
I remember taking a mortgage loan and carefully limiting its size so that all the interest got MIRAS.
We had enough capital only because Herself had left her pension scheme and removed all the dosh: hers, the employer's, and the growth.
Autres temps, autres mœurs.
Anyhoo, Lawson. I thought it interesting to see a politician who seemed to have both a brain and a backbone. Not many around, then or now.
E-K
1980s Labour was more conservative that the current Tory party!
Can Bradford have its reservoirs back from "Yorkshire Water" if utilities have been privatised?
I think the main reason I think the pols of 40 years ago were of a higher level is that they had much less need or opportunity to say something stupid.
I am still soliciting items for inclusion on Lawson's "enduring achievements" list ...
Seems that for most people, they just liked his attitude! Which is fair enough - as far as it goes
It all seems like a very long time ago.
Perhaps my memort is fading.
Don
"I am still soliciting items for inclusion on Lawson's "enduring achievements" list ...
"
Didn't he introduce the separate taxation of women?
I remember Lawson "shadowing" the Deutschmark at 3DM to £1. It probably seemed reasonable to keep the pound at a (slightly deflationary) level, but it also gave currency traders a one way bet given the difference in interest rates between the two currencies.
Resolute campaigner on climate change nonsense. Stood his ground, and no wonder the BBC to all intents and purposes banned him as he was prone to reference fact (remember when science worked on "fact" rather than parameter driven model projections? Heady days eh?!) which was a nono for the BBC, arch evangelists of the True Church of Climate Change!
Prof. Chris Folland (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research)
"The data doesn't matter. We're not basing our recommendations on the data. We're basing them on the climate models"
Dr. David Frame, Climate Modeller, Oxford Uni
"The models are convenient fictions that provide something useful"
(e.g. his job...)
As a fact man - how is it given we are witnessing front stage the heat death of the planet, that the Romans grew red grapes as far North as York? Can't do that now....
Ot that the Vikings farmed Greenland ... GREENland.
Can't do that now...
I shall raise a glass to Sir Nige.
Farming in Greenland now:
https://polarjournal.ch/en/2021/03/05/agriculture-in-greenland/
Don
To be fair it looks as if the Roman climate is coming back, I went to a vineyard in (aptly) Last of the Summer Wine country a couple of years back. The southern loop of the M25 has quite a few vineyards just off it.
Makes you wonder how many of the great easterly migrations/invasions into Europe may have been climate-related. Don't know enough about the various barbarians. Churchill on 400 BC Britain:
"At this point the march of invention brought a new factor upon the scene. Iron was dug and forged. Men armed with iron entered Britain from the Continent and killed the men of bronze. At this point we can plainly recognise across the vanished millenniums a fellow-being. A biped capable of slaying another with iron is evidently to modern eyes a man and a brother. It cannot be doubted that for smashing skulls, whether long-headed or round, iron is best."
Don Cox said...
Farming in Greenland now:
https://polarjournal.ch/en/2021/03/05/agriculture-in-greenland/
Don
10:48 am
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Why? Because it's getting WARMER, Don. Did you read the link?
Fab. Greenlanders benefitting from a warmer climate. As will everyone. And agriculture will benefit from more C02 as the HUGE increase in greening on the planet in the past 50 years bears witness to.
Warm. Good. Civilisation thrives. And it's been much warmer before and we are still here.
Cold. Bad. Civilisation struggles.
Not to mention that NetZero will achieve precisely **** all whilst China, India and Africa build new coal power stations. Other than crash the economy (well, this shower are good at that) and further impoverish us as well. Another thing they are good at
https://www.science.org/content/article/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear
We have all noticed the increased affordability of housing since the abolition of Miras ;-)
Can you imagine getting tax relief on your mortgage? I am paying a marginal rate of 60%. I would love MIRAS, it would be worth a packet to me, even though I have a low rate fix. Still pension allowance is up so that is another way I can work round the dreaded loss of personal allowance.
We have all noticed the increased affordability of energy since the opening of the markets to competition ;-)
If you think energy is expensive now, just wait until the sole provider is a government owned 'green' energy company.
They needed sorting out for sure and were defeated but I never imagined that Britain could end up looking so Marxist.
We had a good 20 years or so of something approximating economic and social freedom post the mid-eighties union battles. However, the left never let a good crisis go to waste. GFC, Brexit and COVID have all been used to hammer more nails into the coffin of our social and economic freedoms. And the Tory party who have been in power for all of it have done nowt and in many cases actively assisted the marxist left.
Your juxtaposition of Lawson and Thatcher is of an era gone by. A sensible individual overruled by pork-barrel politics (PBP) Now it's all about PBP and peak PBP seems to have been Boris who loves to help himself to other people's money.
Sunak looks like he might have a bit of sense about him but decades of politicians looking for handouts for their constituents and their potential future employers will be difficult to change.
Perhaps someone will write about about Sunak's twelve labours (pun) and include his attempts at cleansing the Westminster stables.... but then again you get who you vote for.
The problem with the great Climate Change hoax is not the rising temperatures but the outcome of them.
The models basically are Garbage In, Garbage Out and so can't be trusted despite what the BBC "Settled Science" would suggest.
The "made up numbers" now have a snazzy sounding title "Attribution Science" which is just an attempt to make it sound like it has some rigour behind it (which it doesn't). Peter Stott from the Met Office is one of the first to attempt this and is extensively cited. His work is total crap and just goes to show how peer review doesn't work when your career is on the line if you don't follow the crowd.
Elby - "NetZero will achieve precisely **** all whilst China, India and Africa build new coal power stations"
https://www.iea.org/news/the-world-s-coal-consumption-is-set-to-reach-a-new-high-in-2022-as-the-energy-crisis-shakes-markets
"Global coal use is set to rise by 1.2% in 2022, surpassing 8 billion tonnes in a single year for the first time and eclipsing the previous record set in 2013, according to Coal 2022, the IEA’s latest annual market report on the sector. Based on current market trends, the report forecasts that coal consumption will then remain flat at that level through 2025 as declines in mature markets are offset by continued robust demand in emerging Asian economies. This means coal will continue to be the global energy system’s largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions by far."
"Declines in mature markets" = we pay through the nose for unproven 3rd gen French nuclear tat and private equity shipping wood pellets across the Atlantic to power 'green' Drax. This in the country that built the first nuclear electricity generation in 1956.
"robust demand in emerging Asian economies" = they make the stuff and we buy it.
I may be close to drifting off topic, but the world is changing in front of our eyes, the tectonic plates are shifting. We - or to be exact our Deep State which controls, or limits the actions, of both parties, have tied ourselves to America's horse and charged into battle one time too many, like the Black Douglas at Teba. The result will be the same.
If the US sanctioned us the way they sanctioned Russia we'd be deep in the doo-doo. Russia turned out to have an economy that consisted of more than people selling houses and coffee to one another, and looking after one another's children.
This little test warning message that HMG is going to send to all our mobiles on St George's Day has a definite 'Protect and Survive" feel to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive
As we head inexorably towards WW3, I can only conclude that the USA know the exact whereabouts of every Russian missile-carrying submarine at sea, hence their seeming eagerness for it. The alternative hypothesis, that the neocons (fired by ancestral memories of great-great-grandads store in Minsk being looted by drunken Cossacks in 1911) are going for the Samson Option, is simply too depressing.
Have to say I agree Net Zero is a waste of time - but we have to keep up the insincerity because we need 'Green' industries. Green is the only allowable way to burn coal and oil making stuff that probably won't save any CO2 being produced. There being very very few other industries or technologies around to keep the masses employed.
Governments are best off doing nothing. To do anything effective would mean getting rid of around 200,0000,000 people from the rich world or say 3Bn from the poorer world over say 10 years. A bit of a job. Even the nuke option is not much good - too quick and too uncontrolled. Best let Nature take its course - makes the blame game easier.
BTW, been to Alps and back, no problems with petrol or les manifestacions. Plainly Dover port is far too small and needs to be bulldozed - compare and contrast with Calais port. Only real problems were potholes in Kent.
Latest satellite on "global warming
https://tallbloke.files.wordpress.com/2023/04/uah-global-1995to202301-w-overlay.png
https://rclutz.com/2023/04/07/the-less-it-warms-the-louder-is-zero-carbon-push/
Significant increase in CO2 during this period
NO increase in temperature. Spikes ALL happened during El Ninos.
So sorry.
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