00:00:09.320And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:00:14.940We are delighted to say that our fantastic guest today is a former Chancellor of the Exchequer under the Margaret Thatcher government, Lord Nigel Lawson. Welcome to Trigonometry.
00:05:02.480So it is sort of a burden for the British people of their energy costs, the costs for travel, the costs for heating their home, every other cost involved in energy is going to increase really substantially, hugely, unless he has the sense to abandon this crazy plan.
00:05:31.580And Lord Lawson, look, again, I'm an absolute layman.
00:05:35.880I don't know the first thing about energy and all the rest of it.
00:05:41.620But my question is, why, at a time of a global crisis, the pandemic,
00:05:47.700when our economy looks ever more unstable, are we embarking on renewable energies?
00:05:55.580That's a very good question. A very good question.
00:05:59.040I think that it's partly because this has become, this greenery has become something of a new religion at a time when Christianity and other religions are less and less in people's minds and hearts and thinking.
00:06:22.820But also I think it is designed to take our minds off the pandemic.
00:09:37.120But if we just rise above it a little bit and look at the bigger picture of the economy, from your vantage point, what do you see more broadly in terms of the cost of the lockdown, the cost of the pandemic, which has been great as well?
00:09:52.440Not only the response to it, but the pandemic itself.
00:09:56.340It's forced us to reorganize the National Health Service.
00:10:00.880It's forced us to focus resources in a different way.
00:10:04.960And what do you see for the country, you know, setting the green agenda aside?
00:10:11.160Well, I'm sorry to be so gloomy, but there are a number of things about the economy at this certain time before the green industrial revolution has got going.
00:10:25.120As you know, I hope it never will, but Boris Johnson seems determined to do it.
00:10:32.320But the project at the moment, the situation at the moment,
00:10:37.080with this massive deficit, budget deficit,
00:10:41.060with this huge, massive debt burden of the country,
00:11:38.860We've been building up this debt and expanding our deficit,
00:11:42.900which contributes to it, for decades now.
00:11:45.680Well, you have to do it, obviously, on both sides of the balance sheet.
00:11:50.040You have to cut back on government spending, which to a certain extent, in his latest statement, Rishi Sunak, the President-Chancellor, has started to do.
00:12:04.560And you also have to do a bit on, however unpalatable, on the side of raising taxation.
00:12:11.560And how severe do you, because we had austerity,
00:12:14.900we had austerity in 2008 and it lasted however long it was,
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00:14:49.040This is not the main concern because I think it is likely that once the vaccination, I hope it happens straight away, at least once the vaccination is cleared as being safe and totally effective, that the lockdown will come to an end.
00:19:41.260Or dare I say, could it possibly be even worse?
00:19:45.180Yeah, I don't know whether it'll be worse.
00:19:48.820If the government abandons this appalling, disastrous proposal
00:19:57.980for the Green Industrial Revolution, then it might not be worse than the 30s.
00:20:04.660It'll be very bad, but the 30s were very bad too.
00:20:09.280It'll only be worse than the 30s if he goes down this Green Industrial Revolution route.
00:20:18.820You mentioned Boris Johnson and you said that you like him as a person, but you have concerns about some of his policies.
00:20:26.240There was a broader question we wanted to ask you because the government you were part of with Margaret Thatcher at its helm is a government that will be hated by many people who watch the show and it will be loved by many people who watch the show.
00:20:40.900But neither the people who hated that government nor the people who loved it could possibly deny that it was a government made up of the big beasts of politics. Margaret Thatcher, yourself, and dozens of others, and people, frankly, on opposite benches who were equally significant political figures in this country at the time. Do you feel that we have the same caliber of politician as we did in your time in government?
00:21:08.820well it's difficult for me to be objective obviously but i think it was a good era
00:21:17.060for the quality of uh politicians the good ministers and uh but there you go i mean
00:21:27.760that always fluctuates doesn't it it does but surely you look at the caliber of politicians
00:21:33.780being produced by both ends of the spectrum
00:22:10.960And you were saying, I think, or maybe Constantine was,
00:22:17.320that people loved her, but they also hated her.
00:22:22.000Clearly, until right at the end, anyway,
00:22:25.940the majority of the people supported her.
00:22:30.520I mean, she wouldn't have won three general elections on the trot
00:22:34.620if the people as a whole had not approved of her and her government.
00:22:42.100No, of course, my point was slightly different.
00:22:46.200What I was saying was even people who hated her,
00:22:49.700who I absolutely accept your point, were in the minority,
00:22:53.080none of them would have questioned the calibre of politician that she was.
00:22:58.200Whereas today, I think, frankly, there are politicians who I like and agree with whose caliber leaves a lot to be desired because they seem to be the best of what's on offer.
00:23:10.300And that seems to be a concern to many people, that we don't have the big beast of politics anymore and the conviction politicians are very few and far between.
00:25:36.100I think he gets swept away by the idea of this, as the French call them, grand projet, and he doesn't bother about the cost or the economics or anything like that.
00:25:56.180So it is very important that his colleagues talk him out of this before he feels that he's got in too deep and can't extricate himself.
00:26:09.460To make a small or smaller example of this is HS2, which is not his project, but it is a big project, and it is immensely costly, not as big as the Green Industrial Revolution.
00:26:30.920and the costs get higher and higher each time they're revised.
00:26:38.160And there's no economic case for HSTU at all.
00:26:41.100But the feeling is too often that once you have already invested a lot of money in a project,
00:26:52.300you can't stop it, otherwise the money is wasted.
00:27:18.640And you've talked, just changing tack slightly,
00:27:21.880you've talked about Boris Johnson's penchant for grand projects.
00:27:26.240There was one you might call grand project, which was the centerpiece of his election in 2019, which was, of course, getting Brexit done.
00:27:38.440What is your view of where we are now with Brexit?
00:27:41.280Because, frankly, Francis insisted that we talk about it with you, whereas I am sort of, I think, more where most of the public are at the moment, where it's become a third-rate issue in many people's minds, although, of course, it is very important.
00:27:56.240Where are we with Brexit and what do you see happening with that?
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00:33:57.860The EU project, many people have said it's fundamentally doomed because of the inequality between North and South and particularly the euro.
00:34:58.000specifically the European, the political nature of the European Union, which is not disreputable but I just don't share it, and the British have never shared it, makes it wrong for this country and unacceptable for this country, which the people of this country decided in the referendum.
00:35:24.000I remember a long time ago, I knew a leader of the Labour Party who died before he could become Prime Minister, Hugh Gates, and he was passionately opposed to British membership of the European communities, I think it was called in those days, on precisely this ground, because it was a political project, not an economic project at all.
00:35:51.400and a political project which is not what we in this country want to be part of.
00:36:00.020So as far as you're concerned, we're heading towards no deal,
00:36:05.220and that's fine, and that's where we were going to get to anyway.
00:36:10.840Well, I think that we could sign the deal, but it would be a very bad deal.
00:36:18.280That's the only one that our negotiators on the other side of the table will offer us.
00:36:27.320And so I think that we will most likely end with no deal, which is better than a bad deal.
00:36:36.560and indeed it's the only way that we can secure our freedom and independence
00:36:45.000and have a warm and close relationship with them, no hostility.
00:36:52.100We have a warm and close relationship with the United States
00:36:57.200but that doesn't mean we want to be part of the United States.
00:37:02.140And what do you see, Lord Lawson, as a future of the euro?
00:37:06.800Do you think it's ultimately a currency that can survive and thrive,
00:37:10.300or do you think that it's in its death now?
00:37:16.160But at the moment, of course, all attention is focused on the pandemic.
00:37:21.860But the euro is certainly not a thriving currency at all.
00:37:29.180But I think that it creates problems for a number of countries, Italy in particular, in the European Union.
00:37:42.440And we decided not to join the Euro, which was absolutely right.
00:37:49.520But, of course, it means we have even less influence on any European Union decisions than other countries, because what happens in the European Union, the way decisions are taken, is that they have a meeting first of the Euro group, the group of countries in the European Union who have adopted the Euro as their currency.
00:39:08.540but we're finally leaving the European Union next year.
00:39:11.140Do you think that's going to be the start of a domino effect
00:39:14.100with more and more countries leaving the EU?
00:39:16.360It depends how we conduct ourselves, how successfully. The greater the success of the United Kingdom outside the European Union, the more tempting it will be for the people of other countries to say, well, we might do that.
00:39:39.060And if we make a mess of things, of course, then it will be less likely that other countries will wish to follow our example.
00:39:52.180But I very much hope that we won't make a mess of things.
00:40:33.660There's no way we could extract ourselves
00:40:38.520from the European Union without having a referendum for British people.
00:40:45.240It's such a big constitutional matter that it needed referendums.
00:40:52.040I'm not in favour of frequent referendums, but on this issue,
00:40:58.040that was the only way we could get out.
00:41:03.660It was ironic that, of course, we would never have had the referendum.
00:41:15.240David Cameron would not have held a referendum if he hadn't been convinced that the Inns would win.
00:41:26.100But that was not the case, fortunately.
00:41:29.500Let me ask you a theoretical question, if I may.
00:41:33.660Taking all of these issues together, the pandemic at the moment, seeing Brexit through, the economic challenges to do with lockdowns and with the pandemic as well.
00:41:45.000How do you think the government that you were part of, as I said, spearheaded by Margaret Thatcher with you as chancellor and others, how would you have dealt with the current situation that we find ourselves in as a country?
00:41:59.020Well, if you mean, first of all, dealing with a pandemic, I think that it is admittedly very difficult, but I think that we have to get the financial situation, the deficit and the debt to, but mainly the deficit.
00:42:24.980because if you can gradually eliminate the deficit,
00:42:29.260then the debt burden stops increasing.
00:42:32.860It's still there, but it stops increasing, and that's crucial.
00:42:35.960I think we'd have to do that, and I think we'd have to do it
00:44:18.820And that's probably why we won the 1979 election. It wasn't because anybody was swayed by what we were saying. It was just because the economy was in such a mess with strikes all the time, huge industrial unrest, and an economy which is regarded with pity by countries around the world.