On some issues, he got it wrong. On other issues, he got it right but is misrepresented by some of his cheerleaders. And on other issues, he was right in the context of the time but circumstances have changed.
Lawson backed Sunak last year due to his concern about unfunded tax cuts. Those using tributes to him to push for them again are failing to understand his record in office.
He was the most formidable Chancellor of the Twentieth Century and a titan of the modern Conservative Party – voting for Sunak and endorsing his approach in last summer’s Tory leadership election.,
“They’re all part of the Barmy Army which call themselves the Referendum Party. They’ve got many problems – one of which is that they don’t know what questions to put in a referendum.”
One ex-minister described the corporation tax rise to me as “categorically the wrong decision”. But the same old question for backbenchers remains: what will you sacrifice for tax cuts?
The former chancellor understood that the best way to kick-start growth – and increase revenues – was giving individuals and companies the incentives to invest.
The moral of this story is that these models provide interesting context – a little like horoscopes. But when it comes to decision-making, give me an economic historian in preference to a model any day.
If we are to grow as a nation and pay for public services we need to encourage entrepreneurs and support businesses – not make life harder for them and kick them in the teeth.
Rather than an ideological approach, these four ideals – pragmatism, stewardship, One Nation and empowerment – should be the foundations of Conservative economic policy.
Not since Lawson in his pomp has there been a Tory Chancellor who communicates such ebullient intellectual confidence, and such scorn for his critics.
Wrong-headed Treasury thinking will leave people paying unnecessarily high as the cost-of-living crisis strikes.
My instinct last week was that he tried too hard to please the Tory press. Nothing’s that’s happened since has suggested otherwise.
The criticism of him in the newspaper most read by Party activists took little account of the effects of war and pandemic on the choices he must make.
When he became Chancellor in 1983, he inherited an income tax system that had its roots deep in the 19th Century. It was crying out for reform.