James Forsyth reviews the week in politics
When all the Tory staff moved into the soulless Millbank complex for the election campaign, they were addressed by George Osborne in his role as campaign director. They were told that the next 60 days were the most important period of their professional lives. For no one in the room was this truer than for Mr Osborne. If the Tories triumph, he will be chancellor and (if he is lucky) hailed as the mastermind behind a winning campaign. If it ends in disaster, he’ll be held responsible.
His dual role — campaign director and shadow chancellor — has been deeply controversial and has exposed him to criticism from those who say he does neither job well. In the summer of 2007, as Gordon Brown soared in the polls, Osborne copped the blame. Frontbenchers and backbenchers alike complained that Mr Osborne had underestimated the new Prime Minister and had not furnished the party with an economic narrative. There were grumblings that if Brown did call an election and win, moving Osborne would be a precondition of Cameron’s survival.
But within weeks, Osborne was hailed as a political genius for his plan to raise the inheritance tax threshold to a million pounds, a move paid for by a levy on non-doms, which turned the political tide and led to Brown ducking out of an early election. As Brown’s premiership unravelled, Osborne celebrated by telling colleagues, ‘see, I told you all he was mad.’
In the next month, Osborne’s reputation will ebb and flow again. Labour is determined to target him. They know that he is the most important person in this election behind Gordon Brown and David Cameron. Labour thinks that if they can discredit or destabilise Osborne they can cripple the Tory campaign.
Lord Mandelson is convinced that Osborne’s weakness is that he is too like Gordon Brown. (Though the noble lord would not phrase it like that.) Mandelson’s complaint is that Mr Osborne views the economy through a purely political prism — and that voters sense that and don’t like it; that Osborne the campaign manager trumps Osborne the shadow chancellor every time. Expect this anti-Osborne message to be a major part of Labour’s offensive.
Evidence that Osborne will be harder to knock down than many on the Labour side expect came on Monday night in the Chancellor’s debate. Labour had upped the pressure on Osborne by briefing a Sunday newspaper that they viewed him as the ‘weakest link’ in the Tory campaign. To adapt what Winston Churchill said of Admiral Jellicoe, Osborne went into that debate as the only man — on either side — who could lose the election in an evening. Had he imploded, the Tory campaign would have been in real trouble. But he turned in an assured performance. The big smile on the face of his chief of staff as he entered the press room at the end of the debate told the story of the evening. Mr Osborne himself looked exhausted. As he was leaving the studio, a young female worker approached him and asked to have her photo taken with him for her mother. When her mother sees the photo, it will show her daughter beaming beside a man who looks like he has just survived trial by fire.
The left’s desire to target Osborne is personal as well as political. Go to any Labour conference and you’ll find that Osborne is the Tory who really gets under the activists’ skins. For various reasons Osborne, Cameron’s best friend and closest colleague, has become a proxy for the visceral hatred that is normally felt towards a Tory leader by many on the left. His combative political style has undoubtedly contributed to this dislike of him on the Labour side.
It is unsurprising that the Labour party should dislike the man running the Tory election campaign. What is intriguing is the resentment towards him on his own side: it is not hard to find a Tory MP who’ll sound off about him. Osborne is a lightning rod for Cameron. Tory MPs who dare not criticise the leader settle for having a dig at his best friend. There is some additional resentment that Osborne will be chancellor at 38, a painful reminder to older Tories that their political future is behind them.
Osborne is guilty, though, of having not paid enough attention to the feelings of the parliamentary party’s infantry. Some still resent his decision to match Labour’s spending plans, a position he abandoned in 2008 which, of course, makes it harder to argue that the Tories always knew that such plans were unaffordable. They complain that even after giving up on that pledge, he has not done enough to put clear blue water between the parties on tax and spend. This changed on Monday with a policy on National Insurance that would make seven in ten workers better off. It may be only £150 a year, but it makes a difference.
It is no exaggeration to say that there would be no Cameron project without George Osborne. He made the intellectual case to his friend for modernisation. It was he who ran the campaign that took Cameron from the back of the pack to leader. And it is he who, whenever the project has been in trouble, has managed to steer a new course.
There are encouraging signs that Osborne could be the radical chancellor Cameron needs. His corporation tax cut agenda is striking, his transparency agenda ought to inspire huge efficiencies by exposing big spenders, and his willingness to consider the notion of self-financing tax cuts — cuts which pay for themselves by encouraging extra growth — would replace the failed, static logic of the Brown years. But his time at the Treasury would be defined by the huge spending cuts that he would have to oversee. If he could deliver them without decimating front-line services or being broken by the unions then he would have achieved something no post-war chancellor has.
Osborne has, unexpectedly, taken more flak than almost anyone on the Tory front bench. But Chancellor Osborne would be as central to Cameron’s prospects in government as he has been in opposition.
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