Cameron v Osborne?

There was an interesting article from Peter Oborne in the Daily Telegraph last week about the relationship between David Cameron and George Osborne and the fact they are from different Conservative traditions makes their relationship more complicated than is often portrayed by the media and commentators.

Peter writes 'It’s time to ditch one piece of conventional wisdom which has been taking hold ever since the formation of the Coalition Government in May. This concerns the nature of the connection between George Osborne and David Cameron. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister, we have repeatedly been told, have formed an unbreakable partnership which is so close that in effect they speak with one voice.

In the light of the events of the past few weeks, this analysis needs urgent reassessment. There are grave and substantial differences between the men. These include: the scale of defence spending; the shape of the welfare state; family policy; the nature of the Conservative Party and the future of the Coalition itself. Factions inside Downing Street are starting to establish themselves around each man, and more interesting still, hostile briefing has begun.

One important case in point concerns Osborne’s surprise revelation on a BBC sofa in Birmingham two weeks ago that he was planning to strip child benefit from higher-rate taxpayers. In the light of the furore that followed, I am told that the Prime Minister privately took Osborne aside and asked to know what was going on.

Following this conversation, the Chancellor disloyally briefed several journalists that Cameron was, in Osborne’s words, “having a wobble”.

It needs to be acknowledged at once that some of these arguments are purely structural and therefore non-malign. Osborne was merely fulfilling his role as head of the Treasury in calling for fierce defence cuts, while Cameron was likewise doing his job as Prime Minister when he listened carefully to the arguments of the service chiefs. But many of them are not.

Indeed, at the heart of the argument between the men lies a fundamental and irreconcilable divergence of views about the purpose of politics, the role of the state and the nature of their party.

Osborne is a neo-Thatcherite. It should not be forgotten that his first move when appointed shadow chancellor by the outgoing Conservative leader Michael Howard in 2005 was to call for a debate on the merits of a “flat tax”, a highly regressive method of taxation which was then fashionable among the more Right-wing members of George W Bush’s Republican Party. To be fair, Osborne quickly dropped this idea.

David Cameron stems from a more mainstream Conservative tradition. He cannot be really called a Thatcherite, while his moral and emotional predisposition stretches back towards the paternalistic Toryism of Benjamin Disraeli, Stanley Baldwin and Harold Macmillan.'

He goes on to say ’In his conference speech, Cameron transcended his party and addressed the country. He summoned up images of total war in order to demand a common sacrifice and send out the powerful message that “we are all in this together”. He was (considering the partisan nature of the occasion) generous to his political opponents, and indeed this has been a very welcome characteristic of the Prime Minister since he entered No 10 in May.

Not a fraction of this grace was evident from George Osborne when he stood up in the Commons on Wednesday afternoon. It is hard to overstate the gravity and seriousness of that occasion. The Chancellor was making a series of announcements which – necessary though they were – will cause hundreds of thousands of people to lose their jobs or livelihoods. He should have been sombre and statesmanlike.

Instead, he sprinkled his speech with cheap and narky remarks (for instance drawing attention to the absence of Gordon Brown) that were designed to irritate Labour.
From the start of his speech he pursued party advantage. When he had bad news to deliver he gabbled through it very fast and used jargon, a bad habit of Mr Brown’s.'

And finishes with ‘There was not a sniff of this generosity in the Osborne speech, which concentrated instead on the idle and feckless poor. The idea of the universal tax credit – central to Iain Duncan Smith’s concept of making it economically worthwhile for the jobless to return to work – was strangely sidelined.

The Big Society was not the only casualty. After Wednesday, it will be very much more difficult for Nick Clegg to convince Lib Dem MPs to remain loyal to the Coalition. There are two ways of selling spending cuts. One is the sneering, smirking and partisan way favoured by Osborne on Wednesday. The other involves being open, expansive, and rising above party politics.

Only one of these two methods has any chance of securing the assent of the British people. Unfortunately, the Chancellor chose the wrong one this week. George Osborne is in danger of becoming a problem which David Cameron must start to ponder.'
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