Just a few short weeks before Margaret Thatcher died, I asked Nigel Lawson to sum up her bitterly contested legacy. He told me, “This country was in a dismal state, and Thatcher single-handedly turned it around; I think she will go down in history for that, both here and around the world.” By a curious twist of fate I happened to write this interview up in Glasgow just after the death of Britain’s most controversial modern Prime Minister, where popular sentiment towards her death was anything but Lawson’s ringing endorsement. The Scottish Daily Mail’s front page headline spoke of the “Flames of Hatred” as “30 years of Left Wing Loathing exploded” while the Scottish Daily Record asked if Thatcher’s gravestone should read “RIP 250,000 lost jobs in Scotland.”

I met Lawson for coffee in the Lords, a symbol of the inequality so inherent in British society. Lord Lawson of Blaby is a striking figure, a man of cool demeanour and keen intellect. Following his education at Westminster and Christ Church, he started out as a financial journalist, so I asked him of his time as a financial journalist, and what a journalist should do to operate successfully. “One of the roles of the press is to be in permanent opposition, whichever party is in power. There is a fundamental difference between the role of ministers and the role of the press, and I switched to the other side of the fence in a sense.

“One of the major problems is that economics is often full of obscurantism. Economics nowadays has become very mathematical, and that is a mistake. It means most economics is a pretty useless activity nowadays, and economics is a study of a particular kind of human behaviour. Now mathematics is a tremendously important discipline, but it has nothing of any use to say about human behaviour, and to try and derive human behaviour from mathematics is a fools’ errand, and the economists who do that are very little use to anyone. As for how the journalist should convey economics – they should try to convey it on the basis of an accurate understanding, and they need to make it in clear plain English, not in economic or mathematical jargon. If they can’t do that, it probably means they are incapable of thinking very clearly themselves.”

But what of the purpose of economic policy itself, of which Lawson had control over during seven of the British economy’s most crucial years, from 1983-1989? Thatcher herself said in a Sunday Times interview that “economics is the method, the object is to change the human soul.”

“If she said that then I disagree with her;” he answers, “I don’t think you can change the human soul, and if anyone can, it’s not going to be politicians. Most people like to improve their material conditions and they will do that by exercise of their own hard work, industry, ingenuity, enterprise and so on. But what the only purpose of the government’s economic policy should be is to create the conditions to let individuals, whether together or in companies, to give it their best by working hard and creating technological breakthroughs and so on. The governments only role is to create the conditions to enable people to do so.”

In a follow up email, he told me “the Sunday Times headline is wholly misleading, as she was not talking about the soul at all. She was explicitly referring to ‘the heart and soul of the nation’, which is a metaphor for what might otherwise be described as either the essence or identity of the nation.”

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He speaks of Thatcher’s legacy, noting, “The people recognised that the country was in a very bad way, and that unpopular policies might well be necessary.” He referred me to his memoirs, in which he said, “But we did not seek (the people’s) assent in advance – nor, rightly, did they expect us to. We would be judged by results. Democracy is nowadays
a greatly over-hyped
blessing, particularly by Americans,
 who have no pre-
democratic his
tory to provide 
perspective.”

He goes on to completely rubbish the idea that there is any kind of link at all between the economic liberalization of the 1980s and today, saying,

“I don’t think that idea is in the slightest bit fair. I introduced the Banking Act of 1987 which inter alia created a high-powered Board of Banking Supervision; this was subsequently abolished by Gordon Brown, to be replaced by a largely dysfunctional system, and this can scarcely be laid at the door of Thatcher’s government… And if you look at the history say of the last hundred years, you see there have been periodic banking crises and they all have a number of features in common. The idea is somehow, that most crises are somehow the fault of the bankers, but the regulators at this point were useless. There were, I think, failures of government policy at the time that made it worse, particularly in the United States. The idea that the events of the 1980s had anything to do with it is complete rubbish.”

Considering his status as one of the country’s most influential elder statesmen, I quizzed him on the banking crisis under the Labour government, one that he blames for the worst excesses of the crash. “I think that they were absolutely right in that when the largest banks were on the verge of the collapse, bailing them out was definitely the right decision. The damage to the economy would have been catastrophic; it would have been even greater than the damage caused as it was. But the terms on which they rescued the banks were not nearly tough enough; they paid far too much for too little. They made a big mistake of not having a complete stake, not just a controlling stake; they needed to get rid of a lot of people who caused us a whole lot of trouble.”

“They were right to step in,” he continued, “but they did so on terms that were far from ideal.”

But he has also been one of George Osborne’s greatest supporters. Considering all the recent ill omens for the Chancellor, such as the recent credit rating downgrade, I ask him what it would take for him to retract his support from the Chancellor’s current economic policy? “If they think that the only way that I would withdraw my support from the current government is if they changed their policies. The US and France don’t have a triple-A rating, and it is nothing to do with the policy; it is to do with the overall strength of the economy. I don’t have any respect for the ratings agencies regardless, as they were the ones who endorsed explicitly the policies that got us into this mess.

“From my own experience – from what we did in the early 1980’s – this is the right policy. We’re in a very difficult context, it takes time. First of all, under the Brown chancellorship, there was an enormous pileup of debt, household debt, government debt, which got too much to handle. The government has to put its own household in order. Then again there was, mainly as a consequence of greed and folly, a banking meltdown, this disaster; that is, where the banks were not able to fulfil their proper economic function of financing small and medium size enterprises like they should be able to do.”

In a drastic step, Lawson has recently advocated Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Of Europe, he says to me “So long as the single currency persists, and they are determined for it to, then the European economy is likely to underperform. This has a big impact on the UK, because it’s our biggest export market. There is a remedy for British businesses and industry, which is to be seeking export markets and exporting opportunities in the developing world. China is growing fast; India, Korea and a number of other countries are developing fast, while the Eurozone staggers from crisis to crisis. I think they could be looking to the former Commonwealth, and there are many countries in Latin America which are starting to get their act together. We live in a globalized world, in which it is perfectly clear that the greatest growth prospects lie outside it. Britain should be able to benefit from its oft neglected historical ties.”

Finally, I ask for his advice to those considering a career in politics, to which he has a fairly surprising reply. “I think it’s a big mistake for any youngster to go straight into politics. I think a politician would be able to make a much greater contribution if they have had a previous career being something else; and by that I mean something else. I don’t mean the scurrilous things that happen now, where they were in a research department for a political party and worm their way into being an MP. I mean something that gives you an outside perspective. By all means have an ambition. But first you need to widen your horizons as far as you can.”

Dear successful applicants,

Congratulations on achieving your grades. Making your offer is 90% of the battle and you’ve done it! If you didn’t get your grades, well, this letter is not addressed to you.

Your As and A*s have made you the pride of your school, your family, heck, maybe even your town. Today there’ll be local news teams at your school, clamouring to speak to all the successful Oxbridgers who are tasked with inspiring the next generation. If that doesn’t make you feel tremendously smug, then the obligatory celebratory family dinner really ought to. And you’ve earned it after all those hours spent studying for your GCSEs, AS-levels and A-levels.

Over the next few days you’ll probably get pangs of worry. ‘Oxford is going to be really hard’, you’ll think to yourself, ‘I’m not going to make any friends, I’m going to be found out as a fraud!’ It’s quite the comedown after the success of your exam results. Suddenly you realise that A-level History is not actually that difficult. Suddenly you realise that the secondary reading you’ve been assigned for your first essay is more than the entire contents of your school library. If this doesn’t cause you to panic then, well, I salute you again.

The next few weeks will be both fantastically free and oppressively condemned. You know that, by the final days of September, you’ll be locked into a three-year sentence that only ends where the real world begins. You’ve got to make your time at home count; no vacation will be the same again. You’ll rush to see all your friends before you leave, go on an anxious family holiday, get drunk and laugh and pretend that you’re REALLY EXCITED to be heading to Oxford, all the while cowering in terror at the sight of the word.

And then, in the first week of October, you’ll head to Oxford. You came for interviews, in the winter when most of the students had left, except for reclusive and harassed looking third years. Back then it seemed idyllic- you pottered around the town, you worked a little bit in your top-notch interviewee room, and you left with pride at being ‘an Oxbridge candidate’. In October that façade will crumble. You’ll realise that you’ve been set an essay in fresher’s week, or worse, if you’re a maths student, that you have an exam to sit. You’ll realise from countless faculty and general library inductions that you’re expect to ‘work independently for eight hours a day’, and that you can’t be sure whether tutes and lectures will be at 9am the morning after your favourite club night, or bizarrely placed on Saturday afternoons.

And you’ll be sold tickets to three or four different events during the week, which you’ll feel an obligation to go to, even if you’re going to spend the next few years never setting foot again in Carbon, Lola Lo or Rappongi. And when you wake up the next morning, the feeling of dread will grip you again, and you’ll scurry to be the first fresher in the library.

The dirty little secret of Oxford, however, is that it’s not that hard. You’ve been sold a lie. Your teachers at school are in on it. The national papers are in on it. Your tutors at Oxford are in on it, heck, they’re the ones who started it.

Getting into Oxford is the difficult part. It’s difficult not because A-levels are hard (you’ll realise very swiftly how easy they are), but because it’s a lottery. Some great students will miss out; some shitting students will get in. It takes hard work, yes, but it also takes a lot of luck. You might’ve had to get three As but, chances are if you’ve been accepted to Oxford, that wasn’t the most taxing proposition. The real fear was that, last December, you were going to be overlooked in favour of Mr Self Confident Eton-Thompson, or Miss State School Quota. All the rumours- good and bad- are true, and the result is an admission system that rewards the lucky, rather than the brilliant.

But lucky you are, and now you’re at Oxford, facing its infamously difficult curriculum. Your tutor has dedicated their entire life to academia and sits you down and tell you that THIS IS IT- this is the best place for the most brilliant people. Just like them. It’s a self-aggrandising boast, albeit a fun one, and you should take it with a pinch of salt. Oxford is a place for lucky people who worked hard enough to get a few As at A-level. If you managed that, then you’ll be able to cope with your course here. 

Your real enemy at Oxford isn’t the work. It isn’t the nights out that write you off for the next day. It isn’t the horribly time consuming extra-curriculars like the Union, the Blues or Cherwell. It’s the fact that you’ll be constantly scared of failure and constantly supposing that you’re on the brink of it. You’ll sit and worry that your marks aren’t good enough, your essays aren’t incisive enough, your bibliography isn’t long enough, your lab work isn’t precise enough, your vocabulary isn’t big enough, your translation isn’t accurate enough…

But it will be. So long as you’re confident, you’ll be fine. You’ll learn to get by working a few hours a day. You’ll become used to staying up late at night to finish an essay. And you’ll become immune to the constructive criticism of your tutor who, after all, is just there to help you. And, suddenly and mysteriously, it will all cease to be that difficult, and everything you spent the last month worrying about will just float away…

Of course, that’s not to make you all big headed. If you don’t worry about your work at all and choose to go out all the time and then come back late and make loads of noise outside my window, well, I will kill you. I want you to enjoy your degree, so long as you enjoy it quietly and nowhere near me.

Congratulations,

Disgusted St Aldate’s

A major study of newspapers by Oxford researchers has found coverage of immigration to be overwhelmingly negative

The study found the word ‘illegal’ was often linked to ‘immigrant’, while ‘asylum seeker’ was usually paired with ‘failed’.

The researchers, from the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, looked at 58,000 articles in every national newspaper in Britain.

They looked at the words most commonly used in the discussion of immigration, with ‘illegal’ the buzz word in both broadsheets and the tabloid press.

Many campaigners have voiced concern over the prejudicial language used across the press.

“The bias in much reporting on immigration isn’t just bad journalism, its undermining Britain’s prospects for economic recovery,” said Atul Hatwal of the Migration Matters Trust, speaking to the Huffington Post.

Immigration is key in cutting Britain’s deficit, he said: “But in a media climate where most of what’s reported is negative, the real debate we need, about how to best harness migration to support economic recovery, is barely heard.”

Similarly, Judith Dennis, of the Refugee Council, said she preferred the term ‘refused’ ahead of ‘failed’ in the case of an asylum seeker.

She also pointed out the problems surrounding the use of the work ‘illegal’, noting that people entering Britain from troubled areas such as Syria often could not gain a visa in advance meaning they arrive in the UK without legal documents. This presents a very different scenario from the general impression given by the phrase ‘illegal immigrant’.

“I think some of it is genuine misunderstanding,” she said. “People do not realise when they are using the term, they might not have thought what the impact of that might be on someone who is described as illegal. It simplifies people’s stories.”

Taking a closer look at the results, the researchers produced a list of top words in tabloids for immigrants, including ‘coming’, ‘stop’, ‘influx’, ‘wave’, ‘housing’ and ‘sham’.

Many of these also featured in the mid-market range, including the Daily Mail and the Express, while the broadsheets’ list included ‘Muslim’, ‘Jewish’ and ‘children’.

The researchers said the language of numbers (for example thousands, millions), and security (suspected terrorists) were common.

Tristan Mora, a student at Exeter College who comes from Michigan, argued that although the research focused on Britain, it reflects an imbalance of coverage found in much of the western world. “Immigration and the immigrant population in the US are negatively represented, with a similar usage of words like ‘illegal’ and ‘failed,’ and I find it ludicrous and insulting.

“While there would be problems with an overflowing ‘illegal’ immigrant population, I have seen no such apocalyptic influx and if anything immigrants should be welcomed with open arms to countries where they seek to improve their standard of living.”

Dr. Scott Blinder, Acting Director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said: “Immigration is a very prominent issue in British national newspapers, and these media outlets play a major role in the nation’s political dialogue, so it is very important to have a comprehensive picture of this discussion.

“Our data show that illegality, the failure of asylum claims and the size of migrant inflows and populations are clear focal points for newspapers of all types.

“It is extremely difficult to untangle whether media drives public opinion about a subject, or whether it is politics or public opinion that drives media coverage, or some of each.

“But understanding the language newspapers use to describe migrants helps shine a light on how they are playing their role in the complicated relationship between media, politics and public opinion.”