For the Labour Party one thinks of Harold Wilson, Peter Shore, Bryan Gould, Tony Blair and of course Peter Mandelson. The Tories have always had people with technical intelligence, like Keith Joseph, Oliver Letwin (and his mother Shirley who was even brighter) and David Willets but these people have always been something of an electoral liability.
Suddenly from this generation of Conservative Leaders there has emerged someone with a genuine political brain, a finely honed instinct for where the public are on an issue.
He may have a squeaky voice and look like the 5th form swat, but George Osborne may come out of this election in the unlikely role of hero. He saved his party from 'the election that never was' by threatening to reduce inheritance tax which, against many predictions, appealed greatly to middle England and cast Gordon Brown into funk; now, as the election is getting closer and his party was failing to improve its ratings, he has pulled out of the political hat Brown's National Insurance rises.
NI has always been a politician's way of improving the tax take while not raising headline income tax rates. But there are two quite distinctive taxes going under this name. Employee's NI is indeed an income tax - slightly different targeting with minima and maxima but essentially just that. Employer's NI by contrast is simply a tax on employing people - the last thing you want to raise when emerging from a recession with unemployment rates high.
Brown wanted to fudge the issue and Osborne has exposed him, in the process bringing out major business figures in his support, and avoiding the political tax reduction pitfall of favouring the rich, by concentrating the reductions at lower income levels.
It looks as if the election might be a contest not between Cameron and Brown but between Osborne and Mandelson. Osborne, having lost the first round on Oleg Deripaska's yacht, has won the second decisively.
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