Politics: Can Osborne make Britain right again?

George Osborne is using his budgets not only to get the economy moving but to make Britain a centre-right country once more.

George Osborne is using his budgets not only to get the economy moving but to make Britain a centre-right country once more. The political test of his economic policy will be whether the Conservatives succeed in creating a new majority who feel invested in balanced budgets and low taxes.

It is tempting to dismiss Gordon Brown as a failure: a man who coveted his neighbour’s job for a decade, and then didn’t know what to do when he got it. But just because his career ended in failure, doesn’t mean that he failed to achieve anything. In his ten years at the Treasury and 13 years in government, Brown chipped away at the vigorous virtues unleashed by Thatcherism. He increased the size of the state — extending its grip on the middle classes — and shifted the centre of British politics to the left.