Laura Trott, Hunt’s deputy at the U.K. Treasury, has dismissed allegations of foul play as “an excuse to try and wriggle out of Labour’s disastrous £28 billion of unfunded spending.”
But in truth Treasury ministers have always looked for ways to hobble their successors — especially in the run-up to an election.
George Osborne, the former chancellor, described this tendency (on his Political Currency podcast) as “classic politics” — to “shut down” an opponent’s ideas either by “stealing half of them, or doing something that makes them no longer effective.”
Cert`ainly the practice is nothing new. Glen O’Hara, professor of modern history at Oxford Brookes University, points to the gaping trade deficit left for Labour in 1964, when outgoing Tory Chancellor Reginald Maudling infamously left a note for his successor reading: “Good luck, old cock … sorry to leave it in such a mess.”
Conservative Chancellor Norman Lamont’s pre-election budget in 1992 introduced a lower rate of income tax which Labour opposed, allowing the Tories to portray them as a “high-tax party.” The Tories unexpectedly went on to win the subsequent poll.
Jill Rutter, who worked in the Treasury alongside Lamont — and is now part of the UK in a Changing Europe think tank — confirms that “at the time, they all thought they were being super clever in terms of making life difficult for Labour.”
