[12] Lamont served in successive governments under Margaret Thatcher and John Major for a total of 14 years, in the Departments of Energy, Industry, Defence and the Treasury.

[13] The decision to join the ERM was announced on Friday 5 October 1990, the last trading day before the week of the Conservative party conference.

Shortly afterwards he successfully managed Major's election campaign to succeed Margaret Thatcher as party leader and Prime Minister.

Asked at his first appearance as chancellor at the Treasury Select Committee whether he agreed with his predecessor's view on the depth and duration of the recession and not wishing to contradict Major, Lamont replied that "there are reasons why one could believe that it will be relatively short-lived and relatively shallow.

[28] However, Gavyn Davies, then chief economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a newspaper article at the time of Lamont's removal from the Treasury that the "Green shoots" speech had turned out to be "remarkably prescient.

[30] On succeeding Thatcher, the Major government had to decide its position on the negotiations on European Economic and monetary union (EMU); this would lead to the Maastricht Treaty.

In his memoirs, Lamont wrote that he was "horrified" when Ted Heath in 1972 announced Britain that it was accepting the Werner Plan for monetary union.

Negotiations on the economic aspects of the proposed treaty began in earnest at the end of 1990 with monthly meetings of European finance ministers.

At an Intergovernmental Conference held in Rome on 15 December 1990, Lamont declared, "I remain unconvinced that the potential benefits of a single currency are as great as its supporters allege.

Later that month, at a press conference in the garden of the British embassy in Washington, DC in response to a question as to why he appeared so cheerful, Lamont commented that it was a beautiful morning, adding, "My wife said she heard me singing in the bath this morning," a response which led to the story that he was singing in the bath with happiness at leaving the ERM.

In a letter to the Chairman of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee in October 1992, Lamont set out a new basis for the conduct of monetary policy centred on inflation targeting.

Transparency and market credibility would be enhanced by the publication of a monthly monetary assessment and the Bank of England was asked to produce a quarterly inflation report.

After the 2009 budget, the Sunday Times editorialised that Lamont's budget had been so badly received that he was out of his job within two months, "but it fixed the public finances and set up the prosperity of the 1990s and beyond"[55] and Derek Scott, Tony Blair's economic adviser from 1997 to 2003, wrote that Lamont was "rightly praised" for putting in place the post-ERM framework, that stage of Lamont's career being "due for rerating since, in addition to designing a proper framework for monetary policy (later consolidated by Bank of England independence in 1997), he also took most of the tough decisions on spending and tax to put the public finances on the road to recovery.

"[56] Sir Alan Walters, whose opposition to the ERM as Mrs Thatcher's economic adviser triggered Nigel Lawson's resignation as chancellor, wrote on the buoyant state of the British economy in 2001 that "all the difficult and correct decisions that produced this happy state of affairs were taken and implemented by Norman Lamont, who thus showed himself, in his Mark 2 post ERM version, to be not only the most effective but also the bravest Chancellor since the War.

"[57] During the Newbury by-election in May 1993, Lamont was asked at a press conference whether he most regretted claiming to see "the green shoots of recovery" or "singing in his bath".

[58] Three weeks after the government's massive loss in the by-election, on 27 May 1993, Lamont was sacked (technically resigning from the government because he declined a demotion to become Secretary of State for the Environment), throwing (by his own account) Major's letter of regret at his departure unopened into the wastepaper basket, and giving a resignation speech in the House of Commons on 9 June, that made clear his feeling that he had been unfairly treated, saying that the government "gives the impression of being in office but not in power"; the then Party Chairman Norman Fowler dismissed the speech as "dud, nasty, ludicrous and silly".

Lamont attributes the large public sector borrowing requirement (i.e. fiscal deficit) of these years to the depth of the recession triggered by his inability to cut interest rates sooner within the ERM.

[citation needed] The day after his dismissal from the Treasury, Sir Samuel Brittan wrote in the Financial Times that history was likely to record him as one of the better Chancellors, citing his structural reforms of taxation, his determination to give priority to securing and maintaining low inflation and the delayed tax increases in his final budget.

"[60] According to Ruth Lea, writing 12 years later on the factors behind the subsequent performance of the British economy, Lamont had introduced path-breaking macro-economic reforms including inflation targeting and the first steps towards an independent Bank of England and had begun a programme of fiscal consolidation, which transformed the public finances.

[62] Shortly before the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, the journalist Matthew d'Ancona wrote that someone must have dared to make the initial leap to retrieve the "frozen thesis" from its glacial prison.

As a former Chancellor, I can only say that I cannot pinpoint a single concrete advantage that unambiguously comes to this country because of our membership of the European Union," Lamont told the group.

"[64] Lamont implicitly challenged the view expressed by John Major, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: "It has recently been said that the option of leaving the Community was 'unthinkable.'

He stopped short of arguing Britain should unilaterally withdraw from the European Union "today," but warned: "the issue may well return to the political agenda."

[70] In February 2005, it was reported in The Times that Lamont and John Major had held up the release of papers concerning Black Wednesday under the Freedom of Information Act.

Later it emerged that the source of the story had been Damian McBride, then a Treasury civil servant who as a result of this became a special adviser to the then Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

McBride in 2009 resigned from a similar position in 10 Downing Street following publication of emails indicating a plan to smear leading Conservative politicians.

[71] In October 2006, he complained that the new party leader David Cameron (Lamont's political adviser around the time of Black Wednesday) lacked policies.

[72] In late 2008, Cameron asked Lamont, together with fellow former chancellors Geoffrey Howe, Nigel Lawson and Kenneth Clarke, to provide him with strategic political and economic advice as Britain's banking and fiscal position worsened.

[citation needed] In February 2015, Lamont resigned as a director of Phorm Corporation Limited, an internet personalisation technology company.

[citation needed] Yanis Varoufakis said Lamont provided him with "counsel", and "advice" and was "a pillar of strength" while he unsuccessfully negotiated Debt relief with the troika during his six months as Greek Finance Minister in 2015.