George Osborne has a PR problem. This became clear to me after he fell victim to the crude wit of David Mitchell and Robert Webb in the most recent series of Peep Show. Yet the Chancellor – an as yet reclusive, but influential, member of this frantic Coalition government – is more than the service-slashing stereotype that he plays in the mainstream of opinion. Eager to please an electorate who are naturally turned off by the Coalition’s cuts narrative, the Chancellor used this week’s Budget to create a vision for Britain beyond the fiscal consolidation, and in doing so will seek bolster his own leadership ambitions.
In many ways a Cameron clone, Osborne is a natural sidekick to his Prime Ministerial colleague. Privately and Oxbridge educated, he is a creature of Westminster, never having left politics since joining as a Conservative researcher in 1994. Unlike the previous occupants of Number 10 & 11, the pair are allies, sharing metropolitan and socially liberal instincts (Osborne managed Cameron’s successful 2005 leadership campaign). Along with Michael Gove and Oliver Letwin, Osborne belongs to the very inner circle of Tory ideologues and policy chiefs. His meteoric rise – at 39, he is among the youngest members of the government – owes as much to the Prime Minister’s patronage as to his own sharp intellect. However Osborne brings something distinct to the Conservative Party – a pragmatic Euroscepticism, an ideological bent and a taste for confrontation that may serve him well in the future.
This was a budget with 2015 firmly in mind. Thanks to the Lib Dems’ acute unpopularity, this is virtually guaranteed to be a five year parliament. At this early stage therefore, it is more important for Osborne to be respected than to be loved. Being seen to make ‘tough’ spending cuts whilst keeping the middle class on board with token gestures on fuel duty and marriage allowances will help in the long run. Fundamentally, the plan rests on eliminating the budget deficit and restoring growth in the economy so the government is able to offer something positive to a weary electorate in four years time.
Osborne’s credibility as a politician therefore is inescapably wedded to the success, or failure, of the deficit reduction plan. If the gamble doesn’t pay off, then its game-over for George, never mind the Coalition. Given the need for a private sector recovery, initiatives in this budget such as apprenticeships and enterprise zones will help, a bit, but as a plan for growth it seems fairly low-key, to put it mildly.
In the emergency budget last June, Osborne was bold in setting out a plan that will restructure the British State. But he has yet to explain in radical terms what a Britain without Leviathan – the overbearing central government which lends its name to Hobbes’ classic text – can look like, and how it would work. To fulfil his own ambitions, as well as those of his Party, this has to be explained. David Lloyd-George, arguably the greatest Chancellor of the 20th century, used his rhetorical genius at the dispatch box to create the early welfare state – in the ‘People’s’ Budget of 1909. Osborne can do the same, but the failure to explain and encourage that flip-side of the small-State – namely the ‘Big Society’ and the enterprise economy – threatens to make the government’s potential radical programme a mere footnote in history.
It is inconceivable that, sooner or later, he will not seek the leadership. Three of the past six Prime Ministers have come directly from the Treasury. Understandably, when the top job in British politics is only next door, it is difficult to resist. However Osborne is perceived as dangerously out of touch with the public. His management of the 2010 Tory election campaign is widely held by his senior government colleagues to have been a flop. Some now hold him in contempt, particularly those who due to the hung parliament had to sacrifice their Cabinet seat to make way for Lib Dems. The Deripaska scandal, in which he was accused of soliciting a donation from a dodgy Russian oligarch, also undermined his credibility in the eyes of his colleagues.
Fortunately his youth gives him plenty of time to win the public over and establish or inherit a power base with the Conservative Party. He will face more charismatic and less controversial rivals – see Jeremy Hunt at Culture for example – but he remains a favourite. Ultimately his fortune depends on the success of the Coalition, so don’t expect any Brown-esque wrangling. He has to demonstrate that the cuts are necessary, and that his economic policy is working. But more importantly he should articulate a vision of post-cuts Britain. If Chancellor Osborne can accomplish this, the move next door will become a matter of when rather than if.
Tom Beardsworth
Statisfied 