There is an excellent series on BBC Radio 4 called ‘The Long View’, which compares current news with similar events in the past. Seen through this intelligent historical lens, the turbulent or baffling events of today become much easier to understand and potentially manage.

‘The Long View’ seems to be off air at the moment, which is a shame. Because there was an excellent edition waiting to be done before George Osborne stood up to make his Autumn Statement: about the power and influence of the modern Chancellor versus his Tory predecessors.

Take Ken Clarke, the jazz-loving bon-viveur who took over as Chancellor in the immediate aftermath of the ERM fiasco in 1993. From that point until the last days of John Major’s government in 1997, Clarke produced one successful budget after another, simultaneously delivering economic growth and keeping public expenditure under control.

It was a class act, presented in that languid style that kept Clarke comfortably at the top of government for decades, while his peers were felled one by one around him. How did he do it? Here’s the fascinating bit. If you look back at his tax and spending announcements from the 1990s, he really didn’t do all that much: a small cut in income tax here, a fractional rise in alcohol duty there. Clarke almost never cut across his cabinet colleagues. His aims were limited almost exclusively to how much money the government sought to raise and how much (or little) it wanted to spend. Big policy announcements on home affairs, social security and so on were left to those departments. It wasn't enough to save the Tory government politically, but it delivered a golden legacy to their New Labour successors.

Listening to Osborne speak the other day, I was struck by the sheer scale of what he was announcing. On and on he went, introducing major changes in all kinds of policy areas: expansion of mental health, selling off prisons, a huge expansion of house building, electrification of railways, changes to six form colleges. It just didn’t stop.

This wasn’t simply a forecast of government tax and spending. It was a complete strategy for UK plc, with hard-hatted George at the helm. He is the boss, the decider, the generous bestower of gifts, the Imperial Chancellor.

So where does that leave the Prime Minister?

As we settle into this new spell of Tory government, it is increasingly resembling the heyday of Brown-Blair era in one important respect: the return of two-person government, except this time with much warmer relations and better manners!

Partly through agreement, partly through gritted teeth, the New Labour titans settled into a pattern: the PM managed foreign affairs and defence, while the Chancellor ruled the roost domestically.

In the case of Brown and Blair, you could argue that it worked, for a while at least. The arrangement fell apart after Brown became PM and Alistair Darling moved into the Treasury. It’s clear reading the memoirs of those days – most spectacularly those of Damian McBride – that Brown simply wasn’t prepared to let the new Chancellor have the same authority that he enjoyed at the Treasury. The new PM wanted to be the ‘conducateur’ of everything, direct from Number Ten. And we all know how that story ended.

I wonder if we are going to see the same history repeat itself, perhaps as farce rather than tragedy. Given how much he clearly enjoys his power over domestic affairs, I find it very hard to imagine Prime Minister Osborne conceding much of that space to his new Chancellor. Whether it’s the favourite, Sajid Javid, or someone else, that person will owe almost everything politically to the PM, and be in no position to set the terms for his new appointment.

Osborne’s accession to Number Ten is likely to coincide with the next downturn in the economic cycle. There is a danger that the horrors of 2007-10 may be repeated, with dysfunction and discord at the top of government, at exactly the moment when the opposite would be required.

I guess the X-Factor in all of this is Osborne’s famed cleverness. Maybe he is wise enough to look at what happened in the previous decade, and establish a more stable partnership with his Chancellor. Perhaps he will be happy to move into a Cameron-like foreign affairs role. Somehow I doubt it.

Whatever does happen, it’s pretty clear that we are set for another two or three years of most of the major decisions in UK government being taken by just two people, as they were with Brown and Blair for a decade or so. In Scotland, it could be argued that it’s just one person, with the First Minister looking increasingly unchallengeable.

Call me old fashioned, but I do long for a return to a more collective form of cabinet government, of the kind which existed before Mrs Thatcher and which resurfaced briefly in the era of Major, Clarke and Heseltine.

Why is this idea so outmoded? Surely the complexity of modern society and international affairs means that more wise heads than ever before are required to solve the political, diplomatic and social issues that confront us.

The problem is that politicians have become convinced that the route to success, based on polling evidence, is to be perceived, first and foremost, as ‘strong-decisive’, rather than ‘consensual-thoughtful’. There are plenty of media headlines in the former, none in the latter.

We seem to be longing for the political Wizard of Oz who tells us that he or she is capable of coming up with the answer to everything – housing, policing, healthcare, social care, transport, pensions, you name it. And we all know what the Wiz turned out to be once the curtain was revealed – just like the rest of us: unsure of himself, a bit feeble, winging it for the most part, looking in vain for the right answers.