Nigel Lawson writes this week’s Speccie diary:

“I was at a small private dinner in Chelsea at which the guest of honour was the then leader of the Labour party and leader of the opposition, Hugh Gaitskell. During the course of the dinner, I found myself in an increasingly heated argument with Gaitskell over whether the UK should join what was then the European Economic Community.

He was passionately opposed, and I was in favour of it. He became more and more exercised, his face got redder and redder, and I was afraid he was about to burst a blood vessel. Then, a few days later, and still only in his fifties, he dropped down dead. I was overcome with guilt, fearing that I may have precipitated his untimely end. Perhaps my present stance on the EU is some kind of penance.”