Nigel Lawson Quotes

I hate this argument that says little Britain or something outside, or Britain is part of a wider Europe. We can both be within our trading relationships within Europe but we can also be a fantastic global trader.

The U.K. is outward-looking, trade-oriented, growth-oriented, and we do not have enough of that storyline, that tradition, that culture within the European Union.

We are not some small landlocked European country who needs the E.U. to make decisions for us or protect us from competition.

Leaving the E.U. enables the U.K. to be more engaged with the global economy, not just the European economy.

You do not need to be in the single market we do not need that we are the word's fifth biggest economy. Most economies can agree free trade deals within two years the EU is taking 10 years or never at all, why?

I am not a British isolationist. I don't just want a better deal for Britain. I want a better deal for Europe too.

I want completing the single market to be our driving mission. I want us to be at the forefront of transformative trade deals with the US, Japan and India as part of the drive towards global free trade. And I want us to be pushing to exempt Europe's smallest entrepreneurial companies from more EU directives.

It is in my heart that I believe most strongly that our future is within a reformed E.U. - not least because we now live in a global marketplace.

In Western Europe there are now only small countries—those that know it and those that don't know it yet.

The development of science has produced an industrial revolution which has brought different peoples in such close contact with one another through colonization and commerce that no matter how some nations may still look down upon others, no country can harbor the illusion that its career is decided wholly within itself.

Leaving the E.U. will enable the U.K. to undertake a major campaign for import substitution.

We have the eurozone. Could we accept to be cleared, regulated, and de facto have inflows and outflows from a country that has decided to leave the E.U.? For me, definitely not.

Leaving the E.U. would mean the 'Guernseyfication' of the U.K., which would then be a little country on the world scale. It would isolate itself and become a trading post and arbitration place at Europe's border.

Theresa May has made a decision that we want our economic future to remain close to Europe: it's the biggest single market in the world; it's right on our doorstep.

France has always succeeded because it is part of the world.

Whether we remain in the European Union will determine Britain's future role in the world and the comparative success of our economy for our children and grandchildren.

Brexit has really broken a taboo. The Brits have shown us that you can leave the European Union, and you can come out better.

The Tories must stop focusing on their ideological obsession with a hard Brexit and their internal party divisions and start focusing on what is best for our country and our economy. Their absurd proposal that the U.K. should become the E.U.'s tariff collector is neither practical nor palatable across the Channel.

I am in favour of a different Europe, where each state can adopt its fiscal and monetary system.

No one can be in any doubt that Britain is becoming more like Europe, though few in an increasingly economically illiterate media seem to realise it.

Brexit is an immensely complex national challenge encompassing issues from sovereignty and trade to security in an increasingly interdependent world.

I don't think the U.K. should leave the E.U. I think it would be a disaster for our economy, and it would lead to a decade of economic and political uncertainty at a time when the tectonic plates of global success are moving.

The E.U. is a backward-looking project based on an economic model of the 20th century.

I made my position clear to the people of Broxtowe: that I would continue to make the case for the single market.

I think Churchill would have thought it extraordinary that we would have thought ourselves so successful, so powerful, so well thought of in the world that we could afford to give up this extraordinary relationship we have in this great European Union.