So the present Chancellor's track record after barely four months in this job, is already looking decidedly dodgy.
After all, he is the first Chancellor in 141 years to have presided over a run on a bank. Britain is the only country in the world, incidentally, to have suffered this debacle in the present credit crunch.
The regulatory "tripartite" regime was set up 10 years ago by Gordon Brown to share responsibility for financial stability of the economy between the Treasury, the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority. But it was Alistair Darling who steered the legislation through Parliament and was warned at the time it might not work in a full-blown crisis.
The Northern Rock episode exposed its failure, yet no-one appearing before us on the Treasury Select Committee, including the Chancellor, has been prepared to accept responsibility.
Then consider his first major tax and spend policy announcements in the Pre-Budget Report last month. Most of the good news measures were inspired by the Conservatives. The big idea of his own was to increase capital gains tax on businesses by 80%. The business community have been in uproar ever since, to such an extent that the great clunking fist himself, now at No. 10, descended last week to order a U-turn.
If even the PM has already lost confidence in his Chancellor, the rest of us are surely right to be worried that he is the right man to steer the economy through the choppy waters ahead.
