CITY AND SUBURBAN
Nigel marks his anniversary with a farewell from ambush
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
Nigel Lawson's resignation caught me with steam up on the Watercress Line. It was and is a day to remember. I had been happily chuffing along some preserved railways on the Daily Telegraph's business, and on getting home was surprised to be rung up by Max Hastings, the editor. `Lawson's resigned,' he said. Shaken to the buffers, I asked what he wanted me to do. `Put down that telephone', came the word of command, 'and start writing.' In the year that has followed, Nigel Lawson has, contrary to his nature, remained almost silent. Even his old enemy Sir Alan Wal- ters was left to make a fool of himself without assistance. Now he has marked the anniversary in his old style, which runs to surprises and, preferably, ambushes. He turned up in the Commons to ambush the Prime Minister, without needing to name her — how pleased he was that she had taken his advice about the European Monetary System, what a pity she hadn't taken it when he first gave it, how much trouble she'd have saved . . . A parting shot from ambush, for he has told his constituents that he will not stand again. So ends the extraordinary political career which I saw at its beginning, 20 years ago, When he was motoring past the playing- fields of Eton in a loudspeaker van, broad- casting his patchy campaign song: 'Eton and Slough, Eton and Slough! We want Nigel, we want him now . . . .' Eton and Slough didn't though, but, by the 1974 election, he was the candidate for a safe seat, had written much of his party's manifesto, and, I think, had been promised that he would go straight into office. On election night, learning that he was in Parliament but that his party was out, he rushed across the polished hall of his new house (now for sale) at Stony Stanton, and had the misfortune to tread where his secretary's spaniel, Lupin, had left a turd. He suffered a crash landing. The secretary,with marked presence of mind, cried: 'Oh, don't you realise, Mr Lawson, that's a sign of good luck!' He was not persuaded.
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