From the archives: Nigel Lawson on the Euro

13 years ago, The Spectator carried an interview with Nigel Lawson in which he gave his views on the EU’s Economic and Monetary Union – views that seem especially prophetic today.

‘It’s going to be very nasty’, Christopher Fildes, The Spectator 2 May 1998

The Nigel Lawson Diet now seems to suit its inventor. Gone are the days when I had to defend him as chancellor against his girthist critics. Then he fell out with Margaret Thatcher – at first, over Europe. He wanted to put the pound into the exchange rate mechanism: she would not hear of it.

Now I catch up with him at the House of Lords, in one of its fine rooms that the Lord Chancellor has not yet collared, looking out across the river. Europe is still on our minds. In a few days’ time, in Brussels, the heads of 11 European governments will sign each other up for the single currency, to be born on New Year’s Day.