There hasn’t been a ‘big chancellor’ since Osborne: IFS chief gives final mark | Institute for Fiscal Studies
By: Heather Stewart Economics editor | Published: 2025-06-14 07:00:00 | Source: www.theguardian.com
“In my lifetime, who have been the big chancellors?” says Paul Johnson, as he prepares to hang up his spreadsheets as the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. “You’ve had Healey, Lawson, Clarke, Brown. Arguably Osborne. We haven’t had one since then. They’re the long-lasting ones.”
The fact that Rachel Reeves is not on that list will elicit no surprise in No 11, where Johnson is seen as a nitpicking critic, naive about the constraints of politics.
Supremely confident and resolutely wonkish, throughout his 14 years at the top of the IFS thinktank the 58-year-old economist has exuded a baffled frustration at the standard of political debate about fiscal policy.
