In many ways, Gordon Brown and George Osborne are opposites.
In many ways, Gordon Brown and George Osborne are opposites. When Brown became chancellor, he moved into the smallest, dingiest office on the Treasury’s ministerial corridor — eschewing the grand office that had been used by his predecessors. He also made great play of turning down Dorneywood, which was left to John Prescott. Osborne has restored the natural order of things. He has moved into the best office in the corridor and sent one of his advisers to work in Brown’s old room. He has asserted his claim to Dorneywood, leaving William Hague and Nick Clegg to country-house share. Indeed, Osborne is so keen on his grace-and-favour estate that he went there late last week to work on his conference speech.
To listen to him, it is as if the Chancellor is still fighting the former prime minister. Where there was profligacy, Osborne wants to bring austerity. Where there was control-freakery, he will bring liberalisation. But at times, it does seem that he is protesting a little too much. In more ways than he would care to admit, Mr Osborne is the Mr Brown of this government — the unofficial deputy prime minister running the governmental machine. Such are the similarities that some in the inner sanctum have started to joke about ‘Gordon Osborne’.
Chancellor Osborne, like Brown in Tony Blair’s government, maintains a role as his party’s chief electoral strategist. He, like his predecessor but one, is using all the levers of fiscal policy to reshape British society: Brown wanted to entrench the role of the state in people’s lives and used the tax and benefit system to achieve this; Osborne is trying to unleash what Shirley Letwin called the ‘vigorous virtues’.
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