Among the many tributes being paid to the late Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson, perhaps the most striking came from Nicholas Macpherson, a former permanent secretary to the Treasury.
Lord Macpherson tweeted: “One of the great Chancellors of the 20th century.
“His microeconomic reforms particularly on tax were both daring and substantial, and have stood the test of time. His intellectual energy and openness to debate was inspirational in the Treasury of the 1980s.”
That is a huge testimony coming from someone who worked at HM Treasury for nearly 30 years and who served every chancellor from Lord Lawson to George Osborne.
Few people, regardless of their political persuasion, dispute Lord Lawson’s achievements.
Rating the post-war chancellors
But where does he stand in the pantheon of post-war chancellors?
A very personal view is that, while Lawson (1983-89) was certainly one of the greatest post-war chancellors, he was not the greatest.
While he was an imaginative and courageous reformer, whose actions both inside and outside the Treasury undoubtedly boosted the competitiveness of the UK economy and the living standards of many Britons, he also presided over an inflationary over-heating in the economy that ultimately led to the recession of the early 1990s.
No, the accolade of Britain’s best post-war chancellor must surely go to his predecessor Geoffrey Howe (1979-1983), a reforming chancellor who did much of the heavy lifting that made possible Lawson’s later tax-cutting reforms.
Life in the 1970s
For anyone who was not there at the time, it is almost impossible…
