A committed unbeliever: Nigel Lawson left the Tory party a complex, divisive legacy | Martin Kettle

Lesser politicians try to emulate Thatcher’s clever, contrarian chancellor. That’s risky in these very different times

In death this week at the age of 91, Nigel Lawson has been saluted by all wings of the Conservative party as a prophetic thinker and Tory exemplar for our times. Rishi Sunak led the way in this response, posting a photograph of himself as chancellor that showed one of his own first actions in the Treasury was to hang a portrait of Lawson on his wall.

There can be no disputing that, between 1983 and 1989, Lawson was an immensely significant and consequential Tory chancellor. Nor that, at his peak, he was one of the most influential ministerial figures of the Margaret Thatcher decade. He then wrote the most important memoir by any senior figure of those years. But it is a big mistake, and a destructively common one in the modern Tory party, to see him as a changeless icon for today.

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