Hammond being lined up?
Osborne may not necessarily be Cameron’s Chancellor
Some interesting comments from Mike Smithson at Political Betting talking up the potential for Philip Hammond to be the surprise choice of Chancellor in David Cameron’s first government rather than the younger George Osborne. There is also evidence at Conservative Home that the MP for Runnymede and Weybridge is steadily moving up the rankings and is currently above George Osborne in Conservative members and voters minds.
He was educated in the state school system he went to Shenfield High School – an above average comp and has no connections with the public schools attended by Cameron, Osborne, or Johnson, he has actually owned and worked in his own businesses so knows a thing or two about real life outside of politics. Therefore he’s got a lot more in common with the average Briton suffering from the recession, and much less attack-able. The big question of course is whether or not Cameron could dispense with loyalty and go for the meritio-technocratic choice? Hammond could be the safe pair of hands that Cameron needs particularly if this story in The Daily Mirror develops.
Hammond is certainly worth keeping an eye on.
Anyway let’s call this video this weekend’s entertainment, it’s from last night’s Question Time and features historian David Starkey
[YouTube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em1sYyg5JyU&fmt=]
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I’m a fan of Hammond and have blogged on his very impressive TV appearances last year.
The reason you cite are excellent cause for promoting him. He’s somebody who’s really achieved something outside politics and certainly wasn’t born to great advantage.
Also it looks like George may have a few media problems of his own if today’s Daily Mail is anything to go by.
Man in a Shed
April 25, 2009 at 4:31 pm
If Osbourne was going to be dumped, I strongly suspect he’d have already been dispatched. His fauts have already been well exposed, both in terms of his lack of impact as Shadow Chancellor and all the, uh, yachting adventures. It makes no sense for Cameron to do it when he’s in number 10, when he has the markets and confidence to consider, and the task of disapointing both George and some other hapless would-be cabinet ministers by not carrying the shadow team.
The installation of Clarke suggests to me that that is as far as Cameron is prepared to go with shaking up the treasury team. If he’d had the appetite for anything moire radical, it would have happened then.
Cameron actually strikes me as pretty soft when it comes to dealing with the Shadow Cabinet – in fact there’s been almost no substantial changes since he became leader, and those that have occured have not been of Cameron’s doing. Is Cameron puting his friendship with Osbourne before the hard realities of poitics, a la John Major’s handling of Norman Lamont? I sometimes wonder – and it’ll be interesting to see what happens when things get difficult in government.
As for Hammond – he strikes me as being of the Grayling mould; colourless, odourless, bland – although I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. He doesn’t imnpress me – but then most of the shadow cabinet doesn’t.
Elektronaut
April 27, 2009 at 9:40 am