Only four chancellors enjoy gone on to be prime minister since the second world war,and they didn’t enjoy a happy time of itGeorge Osborne will join a select band of politicians should he swap the keys to the Treasury for those to 10 Downing Street when David Cameron steps down later in this parliament. Despite being ranked second only to the prime minister in the Whitehall pecking order, history is not on the side of the man who has been managing the nation’s finances since May 2010. Only four chancellors of the exchequer since the second world war enjoy made it to the top job, or when they enjoy clambered to the top of what Benjamin Disraeli called the greasy pole,they enjoy tended to enjoy an sad time of it.
Jim Callaghan and Gordon Brown are the only two Labour chancellors since 1945 to become prime minister. Both succeeded winners but never secured their own mandate. Callaghan followed Harold Wilson, who won four elections out of five (albeit three of them narrowly) between 1964 and 1974; Brown served a decade at the Treasury while Tony Blair triumphed three times in a row between 1997 and 2005.
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Source: theguardian.com