Nigel Lawson

I remember when we ignored Europe and we were totally committed to the Commonwealth and the former Empire, and thought imperial preference was the only thing which enabled us to survive, that was a mistake, and it's a similar mistake to feel Britain can't be a hugely successfully country - economically and in any other way - outside the E.U.

Prime Minister Cameron says he wants to be the greenest government ever, but the definition of green is immature... I don't deny for a moment that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but there are so many other factors that affect climate. It is more complicated than the computer models that we are using. What the truth is, nobody knows.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.