Budget making your head spin? Have a G&T

The day of the Budget – oh the anticipation, the excitement, the nail-biting stress. So stressful, in fact, that tradition dictates that the Chancellor is the only MP allowed to drink alcohol in the House of Commons on budget day: Ken Clarke sipped on neat whiskey, Geoffrey Howe knocked back a gin and tonic, and Nigel Lawson opted for a light spritzer.

So it’s only natural that, on budget day, members of the esteemed press may also become rather flustered and, as the end of the day draws near, a bit fatigued. It was in this context that in updating its twitter this afternoon, the Sun got its ‘NL’s confused. Twice. Ed Miliband, you see, slammed George Osborne’s budget in the Chamber today, branding the Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘Norman Lamont with an iPod’. The Sun, however, reported the comment on Twitter as ‘Nigel Lawson with an iPod’, and an hour later even reassured followers of @Sun_Politics that ‘Nigel Lawson’ has confirmed to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that he does indeed have an iPod. This despite the fact that the ever-accurate Laura K had her ‘NL’s round the right way, correctly tweeting about Norman Lamont all day. C’mon Sun, concentrate!

Perhaps the Sun tweeter was thrown off-balance by the fact that Nigel Lawson’s name was indeed in the air today: according to Ed Miliband, George Osborne has set his sights on ‘emulating two of the Big Beasts of the last Tory era – Michael Heseltine and Nigel Lawson’, with his promise of Hezza-style activism and bold Lawson-like reform. And Jamie Reed, the Labour MP for Copeland, also had a little pop at both the ‘NL’ Chancellors, tweeting that the budget is ‘very similar to Return of the Living Dead – Ken Baker, Norman Lamont, Nigel Lawson – Thatcherites brought back from the grave’.

Anyway. In such confusing times, my advice would be to hunker down with a good book. How about Nigel Lawson’s Memoirs of a Tory Radical for starters? This abridged and updated edition of Lord Lawson’s memoirs – first published in 1993 – is available here, priced £14.99 and should help you identify the difference between Nigel Lawson and his successor Norman Lamont.