If Labour can’t take on Osborne and win, he’ll be PM in 2020

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Within days of becoming Chancellor in 2010, Osborne had established – with the help of a compliant media – the fact that the previous Labour government was responsible for the 2008 crash, having run a historically small deficit at the time. It is a widely held view in No 10 and the Treasury that last month’s election was won within weeks of the 2010 result when Osborne made the deficit and Labour’s culpability his twin themes. Already I can hear him say that because of the eurozone crisis and in spite of the UK’s triumphant economy the times are not “good” enough to require a surplus. That purpose was social democratic, but many noted only the prudence and felt Brown had indeed “learnt the lessons” of Labour’s defeats, the great cliché applied to losers.