Osborne’s had a good week, but it’s too early to talk of leadership

Osborne is happy to shape-shift when it pleases him, which makes him far more dangerous for his opponents

Isabel Hardman
Thursday 26 November 2015 19:46 GMT
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George Osborne has insisted he is “100 per cent focused” on his “all-consuming and all-absorbing” job
George Osborne has insisted he is “100 per cent focused” on his “all-consuming and all-absorbing” job

Osborne’s the main man again. But soon Boris will rise back up the rankings. In and out, the two Tory leadership contenders will swing, like the little wooden figures in a child’s weather house, until there is an actual (rather than theoretical) contest to replace David Cameron.

A few days ago, George Osborne desperately needed to shore up his position after a rocky few weeks of rows about tax credit cuts and jitters about police cuts. On Wednesday night after the Autumn Statement, in which he reversed the former and refused to do the latter, he walked into the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers to cheers and banging of desks. The man who looked so sour after being defeated by peers toured the broadcast studios on Thursday morning in a bright and cheery mood.

Does this week’s spending review really mean anything for a Tory leadership contest that is still years away? Osborne didn’t win that contest when he managed to find £27bn down the back of the Treasury sofa this week, but neither had he lost it when he suffered a defeat on tax credits. He did, however, need to use this week’s economic statement to tell MPs wondering who to support a few things about himself.

First, he needed to show them he’s not an idiot: he won’t pursue a policy with such dogged determination that he’ll let everything else fall down around him. He stuck by the tax credit changes longer than he needed, but he could see that the ill wind blowing wasn’t going to let up. So he gave up, and told the Commons that he’d listened to concerns about the policy; he wouldn’t introduce those cuts at all.

His words this week echoed one of the most interesting things that the Chancellor had said in his speech to the Tory conference earlier this autumn. Waxing lyrical about his beloved Northern Powerhouse, he said: “I don’t know if it will work. But I do know that if you don’t even try you’re bound to fail.” Politicians normally prefer to appear completely secure in their convictions, even when it is impossible to know that you are right. But when he’s not wondering whether he should pose for a photo with his legs ludicrously far apart, the Chancellor might also consider how well humility suited him in that speech, and wear it again.

Second, Osborne showed that his critics, who think he is an ideologue, are wrong; he is driven less by dogma, and far more by politics. A Conservative zealot would have stopped protecting the spending of certain politically important departments long ago, rather than end up with the curiously lopsided Whitehall that Osborne is clearly content with. A right-wing ideologue wouldn’t be protecting further budgets, such as the police, or introducing subsidies for housing and rises in stamp duty rates.

But Osborne is happy to shape-shift when it pleases him, as he did on raising the minimum wage. This sort of behaviour makes him far more dangerous for his opponents, as they cannot easily categorise or dismiss him – especially when he’s introducing policies that they themselves advocate.

Some of the policies announced this week will cause Osborne trouble in his own party. In particular, the cuts to local government won’t just upset Tory councillors but also the MPs whose surgeries are flooded with voters who’ve finally noticed a change in their services. MPs seem far more concerned about what will happen to councils than they did in 2010. Some of them believe local government has already endured enough. Osborne will have to reassure them.

The Chancellor is very good at socialising with MPs. He has them around for regular dinners and drinks receptions, and is always keen to hear their concerns. Some MPs who dined with him recently remarked that he was so keen to talk business and make sure that they were happy that he barely relaxed, apart from a break where he gave them a short history lesson about the paintings on the wall of the room where they were eating.

He now needs to make sure that his Cabinet colleagues feel as well-loved: he has a habit of nicking all their nice announcements which involve handing out money, particularly if those announcements mean he can wear a high-vis jacket or examine an impressive-looking machine for a photo opportunity. It’s understandable that the Chancellor wants to take credit for spending decisions that he’s signed off on, but the way to encourage your colleagues to support you is to not appear to hoard all the fun for yourself while delegating the unpleasant jobs to others.

Osborne is also so powerful now that Cabinet ministers whose policy areas he regularly invades don’t feel they can complain to David Cameron when he causes damage. They privately confide that they have to keep their powder dry in order to protect another area that the Chancellor is keen to take control of. He needs their support in a contest, too, as they will be wondering whether Osborne the Conservative leader would be pleasant to work with.

But the main thing that Osborne needs to accept is that one good week in the Commons doesn’t really change anything. Far more of a threat to his position in the Tory leadership race than the natural storms and calms of being a Chancellor is the fact that he is now widely considered the front-runner. Front-runners don’t tend to win political leadership contests.

But just as wooden weather houses can’t give you a good long-range forecast, neither can an Autumn Statement years ahead of a leadership contest.

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