The case for exit is clear

On 6 May 2013, Lord Lawson, Chancellor of the Exchequer under Margarer Thatcher, said this in The Times:

“Those who claim that to leave the EU would damage the City are the very same as those who in the past confidently predicted, with a classic failure of understanding, that the City would be gravely damaged if the UK failed to adopt the euro as its currency…

The only gain that can be clearly quantified is that we would no longer pay our annual membership fee of some £8 billion. That is the size of our annual net contribution to the EU budget, even after the benefit of the Thatcher rebate…

Over the past decade, UK exports to the EU have risen in cash terms by some 40%. Over the same period, exports to the EU from those outside it have risen by 75%…

The heart of the matter is that the very nature of the European Union, and of this country's relationship with it, has fundamentally changed after the coming into being of the European monetary union and the creation of the eurozone, of which, quite rightly, we are not a part.

That is why, while I voted 'in' in 1975, I shall be voting 'out' in 2017.

The case for exit is clear… Not only do our interests increasingly differ from those of the eurozone members but, while never 'at the heart of Europe' (as our political leaders have from time to time foolishly claimed), we are now becoming increasingly marginalised as we are doomed to being consistently outvoted by the eurozone bloc…

In my judgment the economic gains would substantially outweigh the costs… (Removing Britain from the EU would also save the City from a) … frenzy of regulatory activism, of which the foolish and damaging financial transactions tax, imposed against strong UK opposition, is only one example.
In part this is motivated by a jealous desire to cut London down to size, in part by well-intentioned ignorance...

The Bank of England is becoming increasingly frustrated by the mandatory nonsense emanating from Brussels. Escaping from this and reinforcing the escape by co-operation with the only other genuine world financial centre, the United States, would be a major economic plus…

(The PM is trying to) … renegotiate improved terms for the UK within the Union, which he can then put to the people in a referendum in 2017. We have been here before. He is following faithfully in the footsteps of Harold Wilson almost 40 years ago.  The changes that Wilson was able to negotiate were so trivial that I doubt if anyone today can remember what they were. But he was able to secure a 2-1 majority for the 'in' vote in the 1975 referendum…

I have no doubt that any changes that Mr Cameron, or, for that matter, Ed Miliband, is able to secure will be equally inconsequential.”

Lawson, as well as being a committed Europhile in his heyday, was responsible for the 'Big Bang', which unleashed the market predators upon our world (whose depradations led, inexorably, to the worldwide recession), and the rampant inflation that led to Black Wednesday.

If you were to opine that, in retrospect, Thatcher's 'brilliant Chancellor' wasn't quite as brilliant as the hype suggested, I doubt that most would disagree.

This time, however, I can't see much wrong with his analysis.

Lawson, like Thatcher's closest advisors, Keith Joseph, Arthur Seldon, David Wolfson and Alfred Sherman, is Jewish.