George Osborne is the most popular Conservative Chancellor ever. But he has not reached the heights of either Labour's Denis Healey or Gordon Brown.
A couple of days ago, Guido Fawkes revealed the shock poll that George Osborne is the “most popular Tory Chancellor ever”. What he failed to tell his readers is that Osborne is some way behind the popularity reached by two of Labour’s three most recent Chancellors: Gordon Brown in Labour’s first and second terms or Denis Healey in the late-1970s.
Although carefully avoiding any mention of Labour’s Chancellors, the picture used by Guido liberally used photoshop to remove the Labour data points. Left Foot Forward has gone through Ipsos-MORI’s fascinating slide pack on the Coalition’s first 100 days to dig out the full chart.
Gordon Brown’s popularity dipped into unsatisfied territory on only two occasions – once around the time of the fuel protests in 2000 and again as prepared to become Prime Minister – but he never hit the depths reached by Norman Lamont or Ken Clarke. The surprise finding is that Denis Healey was so popular despite presiding over the Winter of Discontent.
Some will argue that Healey’s popularity bodes well for George Osborne since he also undertook a period of fiscal consolidation. The difference, of course, is that the cuts in the 1970s were demanded by the IMF shielding Healey from some of the blame. And while Healey reduced the level of public expenditure from 49.7 per cent of GDP to 45.1 per cent, George Osborne is attempting to go twice as far by reducing the public sector from 48.1 per cent of GDP to below 40 per cent.
The eyebrows and piano playing helped too.
19 Responses to “What Guido won’t tell you about Britain’s Chancellors”
Anon E Mouse
Will – Guido’s poll was – “George Osborne is the most popular Tory Chancellor ever”.
Where does he have it wrong? I do hope you’re not going to put a dunces cap on him again like the G20 thing where Shamik didn’t know if Spain was in that group or not. Be careful it doesn’t backfire!
No one is interested in Labour chancellors – they aren’t in office and aren’t important anymore…
Shamik Das
Anon, it was Gordon – https://www.leftfootforward.org/2009/12/spain-spin-and-the-g20/ – not me who implied Spain was in the G20. Spain has attended G20 meetings but isn’t a full member.
Anon E Mouse
Shamik – I was going off your summation that week where you said:
>>snip
As for definitive evidence of whether or not Spain is in the G20, G20+ or G∞, your guess, mes amigos, is as good as ours…
>>snip
https://www.leftfootforward.org/2009/12/look-left-the-week-in-fast-forward-04-12-09/
Shamik Das
Sense of humour failure from Anon. Any sane person reading that line, in Look Left, would have realised what was being said. Great job though in diverting attention away from the fact your boy Gideon’s less popular than Brown! Fantastically done…
Fat Bloke on Tour
WS
Running to catch up on the topics this week so sorry for being 2 days behind.
In MK letter to Sniffy did he reallly make a big issue about the under-utilised capacity or output gap in the economy when putting forward his argument that inflation is nothing to be worried about?
If yes then how does that fit in with the OBR’s work on cyclical element of the deficit? They reduced the figure down to 2.2%, with the structural deficit moving up to 8.8%. They did this by maintaining that the output gap in the economy was not the 6% put forward previously by the Treasury but was in fact 4%.
As noted at the time this flew in the face of reality given the output numbers and the unemployment statistics and also that they had the output gap fall over a year with below trend growth.
Consequently any thoughts on this?
Did MK put any numbers in the letter?