Nigel Lawson's excellent advice to George Osborne: Stick to your guns and return fire

Tim Montgomerie

The advice (from Nigel Lawson to the Chancellor) actually comes from August 1979 but, as Thomas Haynes blogs, replace monetarism with spending cuts and it's still very pertinent:

"Now that the honeymoon is over, and at least until the fruits of our policies show up (which will not be for some time yet), they will attack us for whatever we do; for ‘primitive monetarism’ if we continue on our present course and for weakness, U-turns and general Heath/Barber recidivism if we do not. There is no way in which we can avoid being attacked, whatever we do: we must be guided by the reflection that it is better to be attacked for the right policies than for the wrong ones and concentrate on getting our own message across, for which purpose incidentally, ‘primitive’ language is essential: nothing else will be understood."

Lord Lawson is, btw, still capable of wise counsel today.

PS George Osborne has had another good day. He was praised by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the Today programme and we learnt today that tax revenues are healthier than expected. This should be enough to give Mr Osborne the room to bring some relief to motorists. Over on Comment Andrew Lilico looks at how tax has become a much bigger share of the price paid at the petrol pump.