During George Osborne's five year stint as Shadow Chancellor the Tory deficit on economic competence was eliminated but never reversed.
Osborne (pictured with his Chief of Staff, Rupert Harrison) was always a part-time Shadow Chancellor, also acting as elections co-ordinator. That didn't matter in the calm before the storm of 2008/9 but it was heavily questioned once Britain went into recession. George Osborne's time as Shadow Chancellor can be roughly divided into four periods;
- In period one he briefly flirted with radical tax reform, commissioning Lord Forsyth to recommend a flatter, lower, simpler tax system. Some of these ideas may yet come to pass in the shape of changes to corporate taxation.
- In phase two - after Cameron became leader and until the end of 2008 - he pursued a policy of what the Right called economic disarmament. Osborne matched Labour's spending plans in a bid to take the issue of the economy off the table.
- In phase three, once the economic troubles emerged, he became more muscular, promising less spending than Labour and opposing Alistair Darling's fiscal stimulus. During this period David Cameron promised an age of austerity.
- Phase three didn't last until the election. The spending cuts announced at the October 2009 party conference turned out not to be the first instalment of the party's deficit reduction plans but the only instalment. Certainly, Cameron never had a "levelling moment" with the voters - when he looked down the barrel of a TV camera and warned voters of the difficult decisions ahead. His mandate to take those measures will thus be called into question.
On the plus side Osborne would argue that without his caution there'd be no Tory government at all. Undoubtedly, his tax proposals twice rescued the Conservatives' electoral position. Despite his unpopularity on the doorstep, his "numbers" did not collapse during the campaign and neither did the Tory economic framework fold under Labour or media fire. Osborne performed respectably during the two televised economy debates but the Tories ended the campaign with only a very small lead on economic competence. Given Labour's woeful economic record they might have expected to perform better. A politician with brilliant antennae, immersed in the Party at senior levels for most of his working life, Osborne put getting the Conservatives elected before charming City movers and shakers. His youth, inexperience in office and evident love of the political game combined to worry voters that he wouldn't be a heavyweight Chancellor. His unpopularity with voters may yet be a major problem for the Cameron-Clegg government. He is not the ideal salesman for very difficult spending cuts.
