Brown quipped that there are two sorts of chancellor: the ones who failed and the ones who got out in time
Rishi Sunak is the Covid chancellor. Few outside Westminster had heard of him when he replaced Sajid Javid in the role in early 2020, but since then he has spent two years in charge of the government’s economic response to the pandemic. Now, as restrictions are lifted, he is the bookies’ favourite to replace Boris Johnson if the prime minister is forced to quit over partygate. It is a meteoric rise.
Since the second world war, only three former Conservative chancellors have made it to 10 Downing Street, and one of them, Winston Churchill, had left the Treasury more than a decade before the exceptional circumstances of 1940 won him the premiership.
