Nigel Lawson on Brexit: ‘I love Europe! That’s why I live in France. But the EU hasno purpose’

From his grand country house in Gascony, the Vote Leave champion tells why no cost is too great to achieve Britain's exit from the European Union - not the EU's total collapse, nor David's Cameron's job

The journey from London to a remote corner of south-west France takes long enough for the thought to occur, more than once, that it is an unlikely location for a Brexit HQ. The man who hopes to lead us out of Europe lives alone in an extremely handsome country house - not quite a chateau, but several notches up from a maison - deep in rural Gascony. The pristine period chic of its reception rooms is flawlessly French, and unless you study its library shelves, which groan with British political tomes, or use the downstairs loo lined with framed and signed photographs of Downing Street cabinets, you would never guess who lived here. As his former boss once famously observed, it is a funny old world.

The impression of improbability is compounded by Nigel Lawson's expression as he receives me. It is one a courteous but very private gentleman might wear to greet someone who had broken down in his elegant driveway. Nothing about his bearing suggests a man bursting to make the case for changing the course of his country's future. It seems to say something more like: "Well, you'd better come in while you wait for the RAC."

Related: Let's be brutally honest: this remain campaign is failing | Jackie Ashley

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