Former British finance minister calls for EU exit

Britain would enjoy a significant economic boost if it left the European Union, former finance minister Nigel Lawson said in an article Tuesday which will fuel the debate about a referendum on British membership. Writing in the Times, Nigel Lawson insisted that “the case for exit” was now clear and urged Britain to sever its 40-year association with Brussels, reported AFP. “In my judgement the economic gains would substantially outweigh the costs,” wrote Lawson, who was Margaret Thatcher’s longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lawson, a leading senior member of the Conservative Party, said the economic gains from a British exit “would substantially outweigh the costs”. He said the EU had become a “bureaucratic monstrosity” and warned that the idea of “a federal European superstate” was “profoundly misguided” and “certainly not for us”. Lawson, who voted to keep Britain in the bloc during a 1975 referendum, also claimed that an exit would save Britain’s valuable financial sector from a “frenzy of regulatory activism”.