The perils of picking a former chancellor for PM

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Good morning. There is the best part of a year (at least) before the next election. But I don’t have a lot to add about that, other than George Parker and Delphine Strauss have written an excellent piece about Rishi Sunak’s election strategy.

Fortunately, there is a lot going on in the UK and a lot of interesting questions from all of you to address.

Mid-flight fright

Here’s a good question a lot of you have raised that I’ve been meaning to get around to: given that the chancellor of the exchequer inevitably is on the hook for much of the government’s record, and that they will have spent much of their time querying policies they now have to claim to support, signing off policies that have now gone wrong and/or spending cuts that have blown up in the government’s face, aren’t political parties better off not picking a former chancellor for prime minister?

I liked this question a lot because it was a good excuse to take historians and peers for lunch and call this activity “work” — so please do keep this sort of question coming!

The case against chancellors makes a lot of sense on the face of it. That Rishi Sunak is facing some embarrassment because as chancellor he queried the Rwanda scheme, ie he did his job as finance minister, is a good illustration of the perils of making a former chancellor prime minister.

But the reality is that essentially, unless you become prime minister from opposition, you are never taking office in ideal circumstances. Broadly speaking, political parties do not change leaders unless something has gone awry for the incumbent, so it always starts as a repair job.

Of the 10 postwar politicians to become prime minister “mid-flight”, as it were, three (Harold Macmillan, Theresa May and Rishi Sunak) did so on the back of some kind of geopolitical or economic crisis. Five (Alec Douglas-Home, John Major, Gordon Brown, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak) did so when their party was in a degree of electoral and political trouble. And four (Theresa May, John Major, Jim Callaghan and Rishi Sunak) did so at a time when their party’s internal divisions were becoming increasingly hard to disguise or contain.

(The only mid-flight prime minister to seemingly start in a good position, Anthony Eden, did so at a time of intense geopolitical flux, albeit one that was aggravated by his own poor decision-making.)

To the extent there is a lesson here, it is mid-flight prime ministers start in poor circumstances and are often overcome by them. Even the mid-flight prime ministers who were electorally successful have patchy records. It’s really only Harold Macmillan and John Major who don’t have a large asterisk next to their name. (Both, as it happens, happened to be chancellor before becoming prime minister.)

I think the bigger issue tends to be that being prime minister is a different job with a different skillset than being an effective minister, and that mid-flight replacements only take the wheel at times of political crisis, rather than that there is any real value in avoiding making your chancellor your next party leader.

Now try this

This week I mostly listened to the hauntingly beautiful score to The Boy and the Heron while writing my column. I very much enjoyed the film itself — so much so in fact that I’m off to see it again tonight — but I think Joe Hisaishi’s score is if anything, even better than the film it was composed for. You can listen to my thoughts on The Boy and the Heron on the FT Life and Art podcast here.

Speaking of my incessant opinions about film: there’s still time to bid for lunch with me in order to raise money for the FT’s financial literacy charity, Flic. I am falling behind my nearest neighbour in the office, Gideon Rachman, so please, no more bids for him. (A free culinary tip: the eel sandwich at Quo Vadis, where you can bid for lunch with George Parker, is a delight.) They and many more of my colleagues can be bid for here.

Top stories today

• Hands off the ‘green plan’ pot | Shadow ministers seeking to raid Labour’s flagship £28bn-a-year “Green Prosperity Plan” for capital spending pledges in other areas in the run-up to the UK general election will be rebuffed, according to one of the leading members of the main opposition party’s Treasury team.

• Not so festive | British retailers had a disappointing December as consumers held back from making big purchases during the Christmas period. Retail sales grew by an annual rate of 1.7 per cent in December, down from 2.7 per cent the previous month and below the 12-month average of 3.6 per cent, figures from the British Retail Consortium show.

• Starmer’s inner circle | Sue Gray, the former UK civil servant who played a key role in the downfall of Boris Johnson’s administration, is rapidly emerging as a pivotal figure in Labour high command as the party steps up its general election campaign.

• Loan losses | Higher interest rates will add more than £10bn a year to the likely cost of England’s student loan system, but this will not be captured by official measures, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.