1. Say nowt. You step through the door of Number 11 with a reasonable amount of goodwill, and the very office of Chancellor gives you gravitas. The quieter you stay, the easier it will be to retain these advantages. Also, keeping quiet allows others to project their fantasies upon you; Brown allowed Polly Toynbee (and many Labour MPs) to believe he was a Viking warrior for social democracy.
Any interesting statement is, by definition, controversial. The key to being Chancellor is not to attract controversy.
And don’t get involved in party politicking. As Chancellor, you should be above the fray.
2. Kitchen sink the bad news. Every finance director knows this trick. Your first announcements should be about how bad things look, and how there are probably many gremlins you haven’t yet discovered which your incompetent predecessor left you.
It’s hard to give the impression that you’re good at the job. But you can exploit the framing effect, by making your predecessor look bad.
3. Don’t worry much about the numbers. As Chancellor, your job is far easier than that of finance director of a quoted company - the markets are much more forgiving of you. They expect government borrowing to overshoot its targets, and gilt yields won’t rise much, if at all, if they do. By contrast, finance directors who get the numbers wrong get hit hard by the markets.
Of course, you should give the impression of worrying about the numbers - you need a reputation for prudence. But as long as you don’t jeopardize creditworthiness - which is easy - you shouldn’t really worry. Just talk a good game.
4. Don’t be radical. Justice and efficiency requires a massive overhaul of the tax and benefit system. But politics is not about justice and efficiency. It’s about keeping the swinish multitude quiet. Which means not making any radical reforms, as these create noisy losers.
Of course, you’ll want to do something. But the trick here is to pick the right enemies - those you can beat. This means a few public sector functionaries or benefit claimants.
5. Don’t worry about the financial markets. These are largely driven by global factors beyond your control. And they are volatile and so have a high noise-signal ratio. Nigella’s dad had the right idea here, when he called City economists (including me at the time) “teenage scribblers.”
6. Don’t pretend you are responsible for economic growth. For one thing, you’re not. And if you take credit for the sunshine, you‘ll be blamed for the rain.
If you’re really confident of years of decent growth, you might want to break this rule. But it’s risky. Better to say that governments can merely provide the framework for economic growth - and stress that your predecessor did not - but cannot create growth directly.
7. Have average luck. Unless you do something catastrophic or are very unlucky, the economy will pootle along at 2-3% growth a year. Your biggest danger is a “black swan” event that might make you look like someone who can’t cope in a crisis; Alistair Darling was unlucky enough to get one of these - the collapse of Northern Rock - early on.
Of course, you can’t control your luck. But you can leave the job when you choose, which could be key to creating your reputation.
8. Don’t regard the Chancellorship as a stepping stone to being Prime Minister. Only seven of the last 30 Chancellors have gone on to become PM. Instead, regard the Chancellorship as a route into some well-paid directorships or speaking engagements - which is why low taxes on the rich and on companies are a good idea. You’ll spend much more of your working life as ex-Chancellor than you will as Chancellor.
For Discussion: Which books would you recommend for the shadow chancellor-he can start off with the following two;
Decline to Fall-The Making of British Macro-economic Policy and the 1976 IMF Crisis
Douglas Wass, Former Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury and Joint Head of the Civil Service
In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington
by Robert E. Rubin (Author), Jacob Weisberg
Related;
CV;
Born: Gideon Oliver Osborne – he changed his name as a teenager because “life was easier as a George” – on May 23 1971
Educated: Norland Place and St Paul’s schools, before reading modern history at Magdalen College, Oxford
Career: 1994: Freelance journalist for a few months, before failure to gain a post on a national newspaper prompted him to join the Conservative Research Department
1995-97: Special adviser at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food during the BSE crisis, and worked in the political office at 10 Downing Street
1997: After working on John Major’s doomed general election campaign, appointed as political secretary by new Tory leader William Hague
2001: Elected to the Commons in the safe Tory seat of Tatton, Cheshire. Became an opposition whip, then shadow minister and shadow chief secretary to the Treasury
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