Janan Ganesh: George Osborne must dare to be unpopular to secure top job

It is hard to know whether George Osborne’s career is the most volatile in British politics, or the most predictable.

Whenever his reputation soars and his switch from chancellor of the exchequer to prime minister seems a matter of exchanging keys and pleasantries, expect a fall.

When he errs and the prize of replacing David Cameron recedes to vanishing point, you can set your watch by the comeback surge. Call it clockwork volatility.

The authentic Osborne is not the wizard we saw in his budget of last July, which instituted a higher minimum wage, or the klutz he seems before his next one on Wednesday, which must restore some personal standing after months of unforced errors.

Budget deficit

History, however, skimps on nuance. He will be recorded as a success or a failure, and the judgment hinges on his central project. He wants to eliminate Britain’s budget deficit, changing the terms of debate into the bargain so that chancellors still bend to his strictures long after he has retired to a life of endless Wagner.

Despite worsening forecasts for the economy, he can achieve this. It is less obvious that he can achieve it and still become leader of the Conservative party.

Balancing a national budget is hard, provocative work. This statement of the screamingly obvious was muffled in his first term, when relatively uncontentious tax rises and spending cuts were still there to be made. He obliged. His reward for re-election was a much more incendiary catalogue of options.

When he tried to cut tax credits, the reaction was too volcanic to contain. When he investigated pension reform for short-term revenue, older voters shut him down.

Higher petrol duties make sense, given the oil price, but mere logic will not save him a punishment beating if he goes that way. He can make further cuts to departmental spending, but not without testing the borders of what is technically possible.

There will be no uprising, whatever he does. Britons have met the most sustained fiscal contraction of their lifetimes with a grudging realism that makes you suspect there is something to the idea of national character.

The percentage claiming to be affected by cuts fell to less than a quarter by last autumn. Doctorates will be written on the failure of the anti-austerity movement in these years.

Livid losers

But general forbearance can cloak myriad livid losers, most of whom have defenders in the Tory parliamentary party, that terrace of fair-weather austerians the chancellor will feel behind him on Wednesday.

There is no way of clearing the deficit that does not expose him to the wrath of those who lose in the process. By contrast, no normal person minds if it is not cleared on time. If they did, he would not be chancellor now.

This, then, is Osborne’s dilemma. His best chance of succeeding Cameron is to fail in his fiscal mission. Flunking his targets - above all, the surplus due in 2019-20 - wounds him less than the slog of meeting them.

If anything, a softer policy conveys pragmatism in a darkening economic milieu. Success brings all the pain. The incentive structure facing him is maddeningly asymmetric.

It is not even as though he can count on a cascade of goodwill on the day the deficit vaporises. Politicians are thinly rewarded for the completion of personal projects, however grand.

Edward Heath, whose commitment of Britain to the European Economic Community in 1973 was that rare thing, the total achievement of a geopolitical strategy, was gone a year later.

Winning a war of national survival did not save Winston Churchill: victory was the moment voters felt safe to cashier him.

Britons want a chancellor who takes the deficit seriously. They punish the Labour opposition for not doing so. As long as the deficit is there - that is, as long as he is falling short - they see a point to Osborne. But once it goes, so does their interest in the subject.

Flush of credibility

Their propensity to bestow prizes for services rendered is next to nil. And any flush of credibility he has on that day will matter less than the enemies - the public sector workers, the middle-class welfare claimants - he amassed to get there.

If fiscal failure helps him to Number 10, the inverse is also true.

Osborne’s best hope of reaching budget surplus, and a new normal in economic policy, is to put all thoughts of leadership out of his mind. The prize may still come but he should act as though it is beyond his control.

This frees him to work on what matters. He can make the hardest fiscal decisions only if he accepts the kind of unpopularity from which it is tough to salvage a personal future in politics. He can be prime minister or a historic chancellor. He probably cannot be both. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016