Nigel Lawson citations (22 citations)

Nigel Lawson: 22 citations0 J'aime

Nigel Lawson: Citations en anglais

“The fears of recession in the aftermath of Black Monday have turned to fears of the economy racing ahead too fast, with inflation edging up and a substantial current account deficit…people understandably feel more confident about their future than they've done for decades, but as a result they have been borrowing more and saving less…coming on top of a massive income investment boom, it's all been just a bit too much of a good thing.”

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Nigel Lawson

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (13 October, 1988).

“Today 'nationalism' is out of fashion among the opinion-formers. Thanks to a superficial misreading of history, it is accused of having been responsible for two world wars and has widely come to be regarded as a political sin of the first magnitude, fortunately found only in such antiquated and obsolete figures as General de Gaulle. In fact the real danger comes from ideologies not nationalism; for while a nation may properly respect the nationhood of others, an ideology knows no frontiers…Once [the Tories] lose their claim to be, in the fullest sense, the 'national party', they are left, as they are in danger of being left today, either as the party of the 'individual' – a noble but to most people an austere and forbidding creed – or else as the party of the middle classes, which condemns them to a permanent minority.”

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Nigel Lawson

'A Tract for the Tories', The Spectator (1967), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 8.

“The successful sale of British Telecom…reveals a vast and untapped yearning among ordinary people for a direct stake in the ownership of British enterprise. Investment in shares has begun to take its place, with ownership of a home and either a bank or building society deposit, as a way for ordinary people to participate in enterprise and wealth creation. We are seeing the birth of people's capitalism.”

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Nigel Lawson

On the privatisation of BT (November 1984), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 224.

“The acid test of monetary policy is its record in reducing inflation. Those who wish to join the debate about the intricacies of different measures of money and the implications they may have for the future are welcome to do so. But at the end of the day the position is clear and unambiguous. The inflation rate is judge and jury.”

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Nigel Lawson

Mansion House Speech (17 October 1985), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), pp. 480-481.

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

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Nigel Lawson

Quoted in the Daily Mail (London, 26 March 1991), as cited in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0231071949, ed. Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press (1993), p. 381

“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.”

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Nigel Lawson

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (13 October, 1988).

“No industry should remain under State ownership unless there is a positive and overwhelming case for it so doing. Inertia is not enough. As a nation, we simply cannot afford it.”

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Nigel Lawson

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1981/nov/10/nationalised-industries in the House of Commons (10 November 1981)

“We had to dispel the notion that the way to economic success lies through a sort of fiscal levitation. That was the abiding post-war delusion—that governments could spend and borrow their way to prosperity, and fine-tune the performance of the economy through something known pretentiously as demand management…It used to be an establishment nostrum that you need a budget deficit to get economic growth. That was the belief which lay behind the notorious letter by 364 economists in March 1981. We have given the lie to that, decisively. There can no longer be any argument about it. Everyone—or almost everyone—now accepts that the proper role of macro-economic policy is to keep downward pressure on inflation and to maintain a stable framework in which the private sector can expand.”

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Nigel Lawson

Nigel Lawson, Tax Reform: The Government's Record (Conservative Political Centre, June 1988).

“The Conservative Party has never believed that the business of government is the government of business.”

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Nigel Lawson

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1981/nov/10/nationalised-industries in the House of Commons (10 November 1981)

“It is worth recalling that during the 1960s, and again in the 1970s, Britain's growth rate was the lowest of all the major European economies. By contrast, during the 1980s, our growth rate has been the highest of all the major European economies. This greatly improved growth performance has been accompanied by falling inflation, which at 3½ per cent. in 1986 reached the lowest figure for almost 20 years.”

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Nigel Lawson

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/mar/17/the-economic-background in the House of Commons (17 March 1987)

“Economically and politically, Britain can get along with double digit unemployment.”

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Nigel Lawson

Interview with George F. Will (December 1984), quoted in William Keegan, Mr Lawson's Gamble (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), p. 140.

“Economic and monetary union…is incompatible with independent sovereign states with control over their own fiscal and monetary policies. It would be impossible…to have irrevocably fixed exchange rates while individual countries retained independent monetary policies…such a system could never have the credibility necessary to persuade the market that there was no risk of realignment. Thus EMU inevitably implies a single European currency, with monetary decisions…taken not by national Governments and/or central banks, but by a European Central Bank. Nor would individual countries be able to retain responsibility for fiscal policy. With a single European monetary policy there would need to be central control over the size of budget deficits and, particularly, over their financing. New European institutions would be required, to determine overall Community fiscal policy and agree the distribution of deficits between individual Member States…It is clear that Economic and Monetary Union implies nothing less than European Government…and political union: the United States of Europe. That is simply not on the agenda now, nor will it be for the forseeable future.”

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Nigel Lawson

Speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House (25 January 1989), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 910.

“It is here that Britain's weakness lies. The plain fact is that labour costs per unit of output in British business and industry continue to rise faster than is consistent with low unemployment and faster than our principal competitors overseas. Productivity is, certainly rising quite rapidly, but pay is rising faster still. It is this—and not our alleged dependence on oil—that constitutes the Achilles' heel of the British economy.”

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Nigel Lawson

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/mar/18/help-for-the-unemployed in the House of Commons (18 March 1986)

“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. It is no accident that the two most successful economies in the world, both overall and specifically in terms of job creation—those of the United States and Japan—have the lowest level of tax as a proportion of GDP. Reductions in taxation motivate new businesses and improve incentives at work. They are a principal engine of the enterprise culture, on which our future prosperity and employment opportunities depend.”

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Nigel Lawson

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/mar/18/income-tax in the House of Commons (18 March 1986)

“The time has come for a wholly new approach to economic policy in Britain. The overriding need is for a long-term stabilisation programme to defeat inflation, recreate business confidence and provide a favourable climate for economic growth. At the head of such a programme must lie a firm commitment to a steady and gradual reduction in the rate of growth of the money supply, until it is consistent with our best guess at a potentially sustainable rate of economic growth. Only in this way can inflation be wrung out of the system. But this alone is not enough…An equally important part of a long term stabilisation plan has to be a reduction in the present Budget deficit…Indeed, something akin…to the old balanced Budget discipline needs to be restored: the secret of practical economic success, as overseas experience confirms, is the acceptance of known rules. Rules rule: OK?”

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Nigel Lawson

The Times (14 September 1978), p. 16.