Nigel Lawson

Nigel Lawson, a Conservative politician and journalist who helped turn around Britain’s economy under Margaret Thatcher but who quit the government in a bitter dispute over monetary policy, died in April 2023. He was 91. Nigel Lawson founded a climate-change think-tank, The Global Warming Policy Foundation. The GWPF's mission “is to bring reason, integrity and balance to a debate that has become seriously unbalanced, irrationally alarmist, and all too often depressingly intolerant.” He was educated at the Westminster School and studied philosophy, politics and economics at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1974, Lawson was elected a member of parliament for the Conservative party. He held his seat until 1992. As a member of parliament, Lawson was eventually named Chancellor of the Exchequer—the highest economic and financial position in the British government—by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Lawson held this position from 1983-1989. Lawson also contributes guest columns to world newspapers. And even though Lawson has no professional credentials in the area of climate change, he has managed to emerge as an “expert” voice on the subject in the media. According to an interview conducted by The Telegraph in 2008, Lawson states he did not develop an informed interest in climate change until 2005 when he took part in a government committee exploring the economic factors involved in global warming. Climate skepticism runs deep in the Lawson family. His son Dominic Lawson is a journalist for the British newspaper The Independent. Dominic Lawson has used his columns to question the science behind climate change and criticize the IPCC. Dominic Lawson is married to Rosa Monckton, the sister of the infamous climate denier Christopher Monckton. In Mr. Lawson’s later years, outsiders’ perceptions of his family focused more and more on his daughter Nigella Lawson, particularly during her highly public divorce in 2013 from Charles Saatchi, the British advertising mogul.