Hush on the Close
ONE OF the pleasures of my work was to watch Nigel Lawson at the wicket, facing the bowling of the House of Commons Treasury Committee. Brian Sedgemore hurled bouncers at him and he stood up to them. A white-headed Liberal called Wain- wright somehow provoked him to hit his harmless half-volleys out of the ground. Anthony Beaumont-Dark would charge in, full of fire: 'Let me tell you, Chancellor, that in the Midlands, where we still make things . . . "Oh, are you a manufacturer, Mr Beaumont-Dark? I always thought you were a stockbroker.' Then Nick Budgen would come on from the Victoria Tower end. Line, length and spin; a deceptive action; pinpoint accuracy; the batsman intensely focused, watching each delivery on to the bat; a breathless hush on the Close. It says something about politics that in all the long years of Conservative gov- ernment, Nick Budgen was never picked for the Treasury team, although as time went on it certainly attracted its fair share of duds and duffers. He was inconveniently right about its policies, about inflation and about our venture into the exchange rate mechanism — and on Europe and its single currency, he has been looking righter by the week. Now he is dead. I would like to believe that in today's House of Commons, there is someone as skilled and as awkward as he was in searching Chancellors out.
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