Under a quarter of City financiers want George Osborne as Chancellor. He should take it as a compliment.

Only 23% of City bigwigs think the Shadow Chancellor has what it takes – whereas 36% think Ken Clarke is the man for the job. Much as Clarke is a One-Nation straight-talking bloke, if a third of the City see him as the future, then it goes a long way to explaining why we’re in this mess. Anyway, 73% of them want a Tory Chancellor – and so they’ll have to take what they’re given. (Ken himself genuinely and robustly said Ozzie was the man for the job last Sunday on Marr. This makes a nice change from the Darling/Balls/Mandelson/Brown coded bitchiness on the other side of the House).

Alistair Heath of City-AM thinks Osborne has ‘failed to convince’ the City of his worth. Given that CityAM actually did the research, you’d have thought Heath might have pondered the findings thoroughly. If he did, there’s not much evidence of it: observe if you will the City’s view of the other options – 20 per cent for Cable, and a mere 7 per cent for Darling.

In short, the City wallahs don’t like any of them very much. Well, they wouldn’t would they? Their preference would be for nobody to be in charge….and look where that got us.

It is, quite frankly,impossible to be a convincing Chancellor before you become Chancellor. Osborne would have to be unspeakably hopeless to do worse than the last two occupants. We should ignore what City sociopaths think, and accept that if nothing else, Georgie is coming out of his shell and starting to thwack New Labour’s alternative reality.