Good grief! It’s 20 years since a British Chancellor was given the heave-ho for being useless

Yes, I know – I could hardly believe it myself, but the last Chancellor to have the epaulets officially ripped from his shoulders was Norman Lamont, who was reshuffled/sacked on 23rd May 1993. If the government were a private sector business, this would signal 20 years of steady-to-spectacular success – it would mean that the economy had been in such continuous rude health that four chancellors in a row got to hold on to their jobs until either the electors turfed their party out of power, or a vacancy materialised at No. 10.

One of the four – Lamont’s successor - actually made a decent fist of the job. As we’re talking about that disloyal old lefty blister, Ken Clarke, I’m admitting that through gritted teeth. (Fortunately, the disaster of Black Wednesday in 1992 – the ultimate cause of Lamont’s dismissal - made it impossible for the purveyor of cigarettes to the Third World  to get the UK even more embroiled in his beloved EU than it already was.)

Famously, when Gordon Brown moved into No. 11 following Labour’s election victory in 1997, the glum loony (the Prime Mentalist, Gordon the Moron, The Incredible Sulk, the Psocttish Psychopath, Bugsy Brown, Gormless Gordon – pick your own favourite) went ballistic when the Treasury informed him that the economy was in pretty damned fine fine shape after 17 years of Tory rule and there really wasn’t anything for him to “improve”. After brooding, chewing his nails and plotting for two years during which he did as he had promised and followed Conservative spending limits (contenting himself with selling off the UK’s gold reserves for peanuts – doh!), Bonkers Brown ditched boring old dependable Prudence, hooked up with glamorous, sexy Feckless, and let public spending rip (building truly world class health care and education systems at the same time, of course – the evidence is surely irrefutable).

We now know that Tony Blair was itching to sack the madman next door, but didn’t have the guts. As a result, Gordy had stopped being Chancellor by when the 2008 crash unmasked him as a blithering idiot. Alastair Darling took over as Chancellor when Brown moved into No.10 in 2007, which at least spared us Ed Balls in the role. Of course, Brown did try to sack Darling (far too sensible), but – as with everything else he touched – failed. And Darling couldn’t really do more than run around like a headless chicken trying to stop UK Plc sliding into permanent bankruptcy before the Coalition got in, and George Osborne took over. George has had three years to get things moving in the right direction, and despite an abysmal record, his boss is so unpopular with his own party that he can’t hand Osborne his P45 without destroying what’s left of his own tawdry career. So we’re stuck with clueless George – who’s missed more economic targets than a visually-impaired alcoholic archer – until at least 2015.

How odd that the safest political job in a country whose economy has been so catastrophically mishandled for nearly fifteen years would appear to be Chancellor of the Exchequer!