Osborne’s Failure

If this has been a disappointing spring for David Cameron, it has been a calamitous season for George Osborne. The notion of Prime Minister Osborne has always struck me as odd but, on present trends anyway, it is one that need not trouble us any longer. I fancy many voters are able to resist the Osborne charm and though the “common touch” is not essential to success some basic understanding of how your decisions may be perceived surely is. And Osborne appears utterly deficient in that department. For a so-called master strategist he appears hopeless at tactics and, perhaps, strategy too.

As Andrew McKie, writing in the Herald, puts it today:

The reality is that Mr Osborne’s roles as principal strategist and chief tin-rattler for the Exchequer are fundamentally incompatible. And the electoral lunacy of some of his policies indicates that it is the second of those jobs which is guiding his decisions. The Treasury works on the basic assumption that government is about maximising revenue from tax, and that any money citizens manage to hang on to is somehow “lost” income.

Quite so. Having been overseas for many of Gordon Brown’s budgets I cannot recall a budget that has unravelled as completely and as spectacularly as Mr Osborne’s latest effort. It is one thing to raise taxes, quite another to do so while attempting to disguise your budget as a tax-cutting affair. It tarnishes the entire enterprise with deceit. This is not helpful.

And so it goes on and on: pensioners, middle-earners pulled into higher tax-brackets, average-earners who have lost tax credits, pasty and bridie enthusiasts, charities, the Church of England, smokers… Each and all have reason to be annoyed with the Chancellor.

As matters stand Mr Osborne has two jobs and is failing in both. Which does he consider the more important? If he could make a success of being Chancellor his party’s electoral prospects might look after themselves. But Osborne is not proving a successful Chancellor. These are, for sure, tough times but without economic growth they will become tougher still. And there is little sign of robust growth. One fancies that, like some of his predecessors at Number 11, Osborne feels the electorate cannot handle the truth. So he hides it from them, candying his budgets with apparent giveaways and hiding his clawbacks under the carpet.

That game no longer works. Fearing that the punters are mugs the Treasury treats them as such; the punters, mugs or not, are wise to this and, year on year, increasingly annoyed at being taken for mugs and patronised by the Treasury. This guarantees rancour and ill-feeling all-round.

Honesty may be a risky option in politics but there is something to be said for frankness and understanding. Mr Osborne’s problem is that he appears to have little of the latter and to be afraid of the former. Then again, his strategy is failing so frankness demands he admit that.