Fresh evidence has emerged that George Osborne, the shadow Chancellor, is acting like a drag on David Cameron's campaign to win power on Thursday. A special poll of economists and financial analysts by Ipsos Mori shows that Cameron's campaign would take off if only he ditched Osborne.
In a poll of influential City figures asked to judge economic competence, Ken Clarke was the top choice to take over the helm at the Treasury again.
Clarke was John Major's Tory Chancellor from 1993 to 1997, when he handed over to Gordon Brown a golden economy compared to the car wreck being handed on by Brown.
Osborne - seen by many as a flash spiv compared to the reassuringly solid Clarke - came a poor fourth in the poll, conducted by Ipsos Mori for Reuters. He trailed behind the Labour Chancellor Alistair Darling and the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable.
Not sure there's much to add to that.
Except, I suppose, "I told you so".
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Very exciting this election, though. I don’t watch TV much and rely on the internet much more so my perception may be wrong but it is interesting that Cameron seems to have fought the election by himself. On the Labour side, Mandelson and Balls sometimes turn up but I am shocked at how little has been seen of Darling, who I think has emerged over the last couple of years as a very decent and trustworthy person.
Given the current opinion polls, I can’t help thinking that without Brown Labour would actually be on for a fourth term.
@mad foetus
You may be right
The only thing I’d add is that, despite being seen as “reassuringly solid”, Ken Clarke has been talking utter and complete nonsense during this campaign – saying that a hung parliament would lead to calamity when (as the Institute for Government have pointed out) there is simply no evidence of this whatsoever. Reassuringly crazy, perhaps.
The only reason why the general economy (but not the public services) was in a good state in 1997 was because, under Clarke, the Treasury finally stopped doing everything wrong and there was hence a long bounce period. NuLab invested heavily (and sadly wasted much in the process)in the public sector but continued the neoliberal financial policies encouraging unsustainable personal debt, which generate the boom/bust cycle. If the Tories had been in power during this time we would have had the same bust but with bigger holes than there were before in school and hospital rooves.