DOES NOBODY EDIT THE TELEGRAPH

Nigel Lawson: Thatcher's Chancellor takes on the planet alone: As he challenges conventional wisdom on climate change, Kate Weinberg visits Lord Lawson at his French home (Kate Weinberg, 21 Nov 2009, Daily Telegraph)

To spend a day with Lord Lawson is to spend a day with someone who is used to being on his own. For the man who kept his distance from his colleagues in the Conservative Cabinet, who fell out publicly and bitterly with Margaret Thatcher over Europe, and who won at best the respect, but never the love, of the British people, it seems that being unpopular is both a fact of life and an article of faith.

"A popular Chancellor is not doing his job," he says. "Chancellors have to take tough decisions, and I frequently had to be prepared to say something that I knew would mean large numbers of people would vilify me and say the most appalling things. If you are confident enough to face a barrage of hostility you can make things happen."

On Monday, Lord Lawson will once again place himself squarely in the minority. Two weeks before the international climate change summit in Copenhagen, he is establishing a think-tank that will act as a check on sweeping environmental reform.

He is not, like George Bush, a "climate change denier" (although he believes that the science is far from certain). His point is less about the fact of climate change, than our response to it – he believes we should not "slow down economic growth" by spending billions in trying to prevent what might be happening, but rather wait until it happens and respond more economically then.

Which, of course, makes him indistinguishable from W on the question.

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Posted by Orrin Judd at November 21, 2009 6:43 AM