What Guido won’t tell you about Britain’s Chancellors

RT @leftfootfwd: What @guidofawkes won't tell you: Labour's Chancellors are more popular than Osborne http://bit.ly/bKvy08

RT @leftfootfwd: What @guidofawkes won't tell you: Labour's Chancellors are more popular than Osborne http://bit.ly/bKvy08

What @guidofawkes won't tell you: Labour's Chancellors are more popular than Osborne http://bit.ly/bKvy08 by @wdjstraw @leftfootfwd

RT @leftfootfwd: What @guidofawkes won't tell you: Labour's Chancellors are more popular than Osborne http://bit.ly/bKvy08

I'm no Labourite but this is interesting RT @leftfootfwd What @guidofawkes won't tell you.. http://bit.ly/bKvy08

Brown was popular whilst he stuck to Tory spending plans. Darling was never popular.

It isn’t much of a headline to say “Osborne As Popular on Average As Healey and Brown”…

RT @leftfootfwd: Labour's Chancellors are more popular than Osborne http://bit.ly/bKvy08 >> I agree altho the eyebrows bit may be debatable!

That post on Guido’s blog was only meant as an analysis of Tory Chancellors. It’s wasn’t about Chancellor’s in general. There was no reason to include the approval ratings for Labour Chancellors.

all the evidence points to gordon brown’s economic mishandling as having cost us the election,as did healey’s grotesque taxation policies, which left us 20 years in the wilderness.the fact is that after the brilliant jenkins we were back in power in 4 years.i am predicting many years in the wilderness for us with these two economically illiterate brothers

Interesting about Guido’s ommission, though stepping back popularity doesn’t seem a particularly prudent way to evaluate a chancellor, not least because chancellors who spend lots (particularly on job security) are likely to be popular. I’m wary of any attempt to discuss the wisdom of cuts in the same breath as popular approval. This is not to say that Osborne isn’t cutting too fast, but rather that popularity seems hostage to chancellors of the left, or chancellors exhibiting political expediency viz. securing votes. (The point at which the former collapses into the latter is an interesting one)

One reason to think that Brown was popular was that for several years after 2000 Brown was able to increase public sector spending by a significant amount without people fearing the resurgence of a (problematic) deficit. He was able to invest (1997-2001 were 4 years of deep under-investment, not least because a Labour 1997 manifesto commitment was to maintain Tory fiscal pledges for 2 years). Problems with structural deficits looked far off – people were happy to see public services receiving the cash they badly needed. Pity it all happened too fast and was financed by debt rather than balanced revenue streams – pity Brown abandoned his own sustainability rules.

As for Healey – there so much economic experimentation in the 70s by successive Conservative and Labour chancellors in a short-space of time that there is really no way of assigning responsibility, not least because the then policy makers lacked the up-to-date economic data to inform their decisions. Perhaps you think that Healey was being evaluated on the strength of his economic policies, but I think it more likely he was being evaluated on the strength of the economy at any given moment – that’s more down to luck than anything.

Will – Guido’s poll was – “George Osborne is the most popular Tory Chancellor ever”.

Where does he have it wrong? I do hope you’re not going to put a dunces cap on him again like the G20 thing where Shamik didn’t know if Spain was in that group or not. Be careful it doesn’t backfire!

No one is interested in Labour chancellors – they aren’t in office and aren’t important anymore…

Anon, it was Gordon – http://www.leftfootforward.org/2009/12/spain-spin-and-the-g20/ – not me who implied Spain was in the G20. Spain has attended G20 meetings but isn’t a full member.

Shamik – I was going off your summation that week where you said:

>>snip

As for definitive evidence of whether or not Spain is in the G20, G20+ or G∞, your guess, mes amigos, is as good as ours…

>>snip

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2009/12/look-left-the-week-in-fast-forward-04-12-09/

Sense of humour failure from Anon. Any sane person reading that line, in Look Left, would have realised what was being said. Great job though in diverting attention away from the fact your boy Gideon’s less popular than Brown! Fantastically done…

WS

Running to catch up on the topics this week so sorry for being 2 days behind.

In MK letter to Sniffy did he reallly make a big issue about the under-utilised capacity or output gap in the economy when putting forward his argument that inflation is nothing to be worried about?

If yes then how does that fit in with the OBR’s work on cyclical element of the deficit? They reduced the figure down to 2.2%, with the structural deficit moving up to 8.8%. They did this by maintaining that the output gap in the economy was not the 6% put forward previously by the Treasury but was in fact 4%.

As noted at the time this flew in the face of reality given the output numbers and the unemployment statistics and also that they had the output gap fall over a year with below trend growth.

Consequently any thoughts on this?
Did MK put any numbers in the letter?

Labour Chancellors are always going to be more popular as they max out teh credit card giving out goodies. Tory ones are always going to be unpopular as they have to take away the sweeties. I wonder if Healey and Brown’s popularity would have held up once teh money ran out?

Shamik – As Prime Minister NO ONE was ever less popular than Gordon Brown, I wouldn’t really mention popularity polls and Brown in the same sentence if I were you – but thanks for giving me an excuse to mention that again.

The Chancellor is not my boy – I didn’t vote for him but anyway why Gideon?

Guido is reporting a poll dating from July 2nd, so there is absolutely nothing shockingly new about it. Boy is he slow on the uptake. Furthermore Guido, Tory spending plans had long been left behind by 2002. Nice try, but witless argument.

[...] we should remember that a popular Tory chancellor is almost an oxymoron. As Left Foot Forward has previously pointed out, both Denis Healey and Brown were significantly more popular Labour [...]