Listen to James Forsyth discuss the tale of two political partnerships:
[audioboo url=”http://audioboo.fm/boos/1746142-james-forsyth-on-david-george-and-ed-ed”/]
Six and a half years after Gordon Brown finally badgered Tony Blair out of Downing Street, the relationship between these two men still dominates British politics. Why? Because David Cameron and George Osborne, and Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are, in their different ways, doing what they can to prevent history repeating itself. Their relationships are both informed by the Blair-Brown breakdown.
Cameron and Osborne have quite deliberately structured their working lives to avoid replicating the tensions within New Labour. The pair shared a set of offices in opposition with their aides sitting in the same room. This was meant to prevent the emergence of two separate, competing power centres. If it had not been for coalition, the pair would have carried this set up into government.
Even now, it is hard to see where one’s team ends and the other’s begins. Visitors to No. 11 are frequently told to go in the door of No. 10 and walk through the ostentatiously unlocked interconnecting door. Moreover, Osborne and his key aides are regularly present at No. 10’s morning and afternoon meetings.
The cardinal sin in the eyes of the Tory leadership is to try to create, or exploit, differences between Cameron and Osborne. Cameron’s No. 10 rarely briefs against ministers intentionally. But when, during the 2010 spending review, Liam Fox, then the defence secretary, tried to play the Prime Minister off against the Chancellor, authoritative word about how ineptly Cameron thought Fox had handled negotiations quickly reached the ears of journalists.
Those who work for Cameron and Osborne refuse to see any conflict of loyalties between serving the two men. When years ago I pressed one aide as to whom he owed allegiance he became quite testy, saying that this was a choice he would never have to make.
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