Yesterday, it was the future of Conservative co-chairman Sayeeda Warsi that was being questioned by influential members of her own party. Today, it’s the Chancellor George Osborne’s turn to have his competence impugned by a colleague. In an article in the Mail on Sunday, Tory MP Brian Binley offers a fairly withering assessment of Osborne’s record in government thus far. Binley writes:
The economy is in dire straits – even George Osborne must acknowledge that. It is now clear that the Chancellor will not fulfil his Election promise of eliminating the deficit by 2015. His much-trumpeted public spending cutbacks are illusory.
Binley goes on to make the kind of arguments for supply-side reforms that one hears alot both on the Tory backbenches and in the right-wing commentariat. He also says, baldly, that he doesn’t think Osborne is up to the job of implementing such reforms.
I believe that George Osborne should be moved from the Treasury to the party chairmanship, to allow him to concentrate exclusively on winning the next General Election. It would allow a Chancellor to be appointed who has a deep command of economics, as well as political instincts that chime with the bulk of the party. Top of the list should be Defence Secretary Philip Hammond, who has the analytical strengths and broad commercial experience to become a fine Chancellor.
In an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show this morning, Osborne had a chance to respond to criticisms like this. He gave a blustering, needled performance that compared unfavourably with the preternatural self-assurance and fluency of Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna, who appeared on the programme before him. Asked about critics inside his own party, Osborne invited them to “get behind the government”, and he swatted away a question about the wisdom of his continuing to combine occupancy of Number 11 Downing Street with a role as the Conservatives’ chief election strategist. “I’m 110 per cent focused on the economy,” he said.
What that focus will yield when Parliament returns, it appears, is legislation to reform the planning process which Osborne identified as one of the principal obstacles to the kinds of infrastructure projects that would provide a significant stimulus to the economy (which, incidentally, the Chancellor insists, all empirical evidence to the contrary, is “healing”). Marr wondered if that was part of the fabled “Plan B” that the Chancellor’s critics have long been urging on him. Osborne demurred. “It’s a hard road to recovery,” he said. “And there is no alternative [to the government’s deficit reduction strategy].”
As for a possible reshuffle, the Chancellor suggested that Marr ask David Cameron. One suspects we haven’t heard the last of it.
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