In Office Book

Why trust to the inaccurate recollections of a fickle public when you can write your own history, especially when you're getting a big advance and newspaper serialisation deal to do so? Norman Lamont had good reason to describe his time in office. Not so much for the size of his advance--though his account of life in the John Major government was always going to find a taker--but to clear his name. Since Black Wednesday in 1992--the day the Treasury failed to prop up the pound--he has fought a public image as, at best, a figure of fun and, at worst, the misguided, weak Chancellor who lost billions of pounds in a day. Unlike the former prime minister John Major, Lamont has no interest in telling his life story. His purpose is to give his account of his time in office, years from which he endeavours to emerge with greater credit than his former friend John Major. Naturally, the crucial and most interesting period is the period immediately before and after Black Wednesday, where he provides a fascinating account of a day of interest rate rises that ended with the pound coming out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism and in the humiliation of the Government and of Norman Lamont. He works hard to apportion blame elsewhere, recording his difficulty first in getting hold of John Major and then in persuading him and other Cabinet ministers to heed the crisis that was enveloping them. He tells us that their failure to listen cost Britain several billion more pounds. Our only comfort is that this--he tells us--was not money we might have spent on hospitals and schools. These funds were reserves for playing the foreign exchange markets and are now replenished. Whether Norman Lamont will so swiftly win back his own reputation is another matter. --Kim FletcherRead More