Given that Nigel Lawson served as chancellor of the exchequer in Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, Mr S suspects that the Conservatives will have hoped that they could rely on Lawson for a vote of confidence as polling day approaches. Alas, Lawson says that he has been disappointed by the manner in which the Conservatives have conducted their election campaign.
Writing in the latest issue of The Spectator, Lawson says that on a recent trip to New York, Americans voiced surprise that the Tories were yet to achieve a significant lead in the polls given the strong state of the British economy:
‘During my round of New York engagements, there was, inevitably, a fair amount of US interest in the likely outcome of the UK general election — and some surprise that the Conservatives were not coasting to a comfortable victory, given the strong recovery in the British economy.’
He goes on to criticise the Conservative party for distracting from their ‘central message of economic recovery’ by ‘making a flurry of promises’ that could come back to haunt them:
‘I am somewhat detached nowadays, but it does seem to me that the Tories have been mistaken in making a flurry of promises, many of them either expensive or unwise or both, which has detracted from their central message of economic recovery based on careful stewardship.’
Happily, Lawson does at least have a kind word to say about George Osborne:
‘My successor but five, George Osborne, has done an excellent job in sticking to his uncomfortable course and succeeding despite the confident predictions of Labour and much of the media that the inevitable result would be failure and mass unemployment. The Tories deserve a second term. And the prospect of the viscerally anti-capitalist Ed Miliband in No. 10 is hair-raising. ‘
For the sake of Lawson’s heir, Mr S hopes that the 83-year-old politician has his wish granted.
The full article appears in this week’s issue of the Spectator, out tomorrow
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