Bernard Ingham: George Osborne is no Superman but he could help rescue Theresa May

They are that:

Budgets are never leaked;

The crucial relationship in any government is between Prime Minister and Chancellor; and

Ex-Chancellor George Osborne is Superman, holding six jobs at the last count.

These curious notions are being aired in the Government’s continuing turmoil over taxes, Brexit and what Conservatives should now stand for. Presumably Osborne will tell us as the new editor of the Evening Standard.

First, official incontinence. I was brought up to believe in the sanctity of Budget secrecy since Chancellor Hugh Dalton had to resign in 1947 after speaking to a journalist going into the Commons and perhaps inadvertently revealing some Budget measures that promptly appeared in print.

I began to realise my naivete – perhaps entirely excusable in a lad from Hebden Bridge – when I became a civil servant. There was that memorable occasion when, in the 1980s, the Financial Times more or less accurately forecast the Budget over its front page.

I demanded a briefing from Margaret Thatcher’s economics private secretary. He refused on the grounds that he had to protect me. I asked why I needed protection when the PM trusted me to handle the media 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The unspoken answer was that as an administrative civil servant, he considered himself to be superior in rank to one in the executive class in which the Government Information Service was cast, and therefore more secure and trustworthy.

Ye gods! What conceit. The Treasury made a habit of “preparing the public” for Budgets. The real thing always tasted sweeter to the taxpayer than the version offered invitingly in advance to journalists.

Budgets were being trailed long before it became the foolish fashion in government to leak or spin every announcement before it is made. I blame MPs entirely for allowing them to get away with telling the world before the Commons.

This brings me to the crucial relationship in Government. It is not primarily between PM and Chancellor, though their cross purposes may manifest themselves most dramatically, but between the PM and every member of the Cabinet. Do they know what they are doing – and how and why? And are they prepared to do it loyally and consistently?

Thatcher’s “the lady’s not for turning” revealed the bitter tensions in her first administration. The wet patricians brought up on Britain’s decline found her economics alarming and objected to being ordered around by the housemaid.

Michael Heseltine’s resignation showed what can happen when a ministerial egotist makes a ludicrous mountain out of the molehill of a cause that became known as the Westland affair. He wanted the troubled Westland helicopter firm to join a non-existent European consortium while the Government took the view it should find its own salvation

Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson showed us what happens when, in their various ways, foreign secretaries and chancellors go native over Europe. Together, they said they would resign if the PM did not set a date for entering the Exchange Rate Mechanism at the next EU summit.

She didn’t set a date. They didn’t resign then. And the ERM blew up expensively in our faces only two years after entry. So much for their judgment.

This brings me to the man of the moment, George Osborne, who was consigned to the backbenches by Mrs May. He reminds me of the late Lord Hailsham who had five jobs when he was put in charge of the regeneration of the North East in the 1960s.

The difference is that Lord Hailsham’s five were in Government. No wonder he once told us his brain was “addled” during a tour of the region.

Osborne, MP for Tatton, is reputedly coining at least £1.5m from his portfolio of jobs as economic adviser, academic fellow, speaker and, of course, his editorship, but brass is probably the least of his concerns.

He has now got his hands on the metropolis’s evening mouthpiece and no doubt when he has time to think, assuming Supermen need to, will vouchsafe to us through its columns what the Government should be doing apart from remaining in the EU.

He has to decide whether to be constructive or self-harmingly destructive. Before he wears himself out trying to satisfy all his employers he might constructively help Mrs May to decide what modern Conservatism is about.

As I say, the crucial element in a successful government is knowing what it is trying to achieve. Mrs May, please clarify urgently. Time is running out.