Politicians tend to want to turn themselves into brands, and for understandable reasons. John McDonnell is trying to sell himself as a sensible, bank manager-like figure in order to persuade British voters that he can be trusted to run the nation’s finances. Gordon Brown wanted to establish himself both as a prudent Chancellor and as Tony Blair’s conscience to ease his path to Downing Street. And George Osborne, too, wanted to establish himself as a brand and not just AN Other Politician in order to service David Cameron’s electoral strategy.
The image he cultivated was of a tough and hardheaded pragmatist making difficult decisions in the national interest to balance the books. That image clearly worked for the Conservative Party, at least in 2015. But the danger is that politicians tend to believe their own hype – and that risk is more acute in the Tory party, which tends to canonise its departed leaders. (Labour politicians do the same thing, of course; but that party tends to bury its own past rather than praise it, so it has less of an effect.)
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