As Chancellor of the Exchequer, he presided over a rising economy. His budgets combined eye-grabbing tax cuts with increases in public spending. After the departure of a long-serving, controversial Prime Minister he seemed an obvious choice to lead the government. But he faced strong critics within his party. Many worried about his obsession with paperwork and detail, and one perennial dissident wrote that his new leader “is probably unequal to the present difficult conjecture, a fair and candid man and an excellent Minister in days of calm and sunshine, but not endowed with either capacity or experience for these stormy times, besides being disqualified for vigorous measures by the remissness and timidity of his character.”

Sounds familiar? This man was Frederick “Prosperity” Robinson, Viscount Goderich, who became Prime Minister in 1827. He proved unable to cope with the pressures of a divided Cabinet and party, and after only three months he disappeared from office in confusion, without even being aware that King George IV had accepted his resignation.

Prosperity Robinson demonstrates a familiar pattern in British politics: it is very unusual to be a successful Chancellor and a successful Prime Minister. Gladstone managed it (and was the last man to do both jobs at once) and so did Lloyd George. But otherwise the experience of ex-Chancellors in the top job offers warning to Gordon Brown. Asquith and Neville Chamberlain were authoritative, reforming Chancellors who came to grief as Prime Ministers. In modern times, John Major’s reputation as Chancellor did not survive his Premiership.

So is the Chancellorship a curse? Or is the Peter Principle at work: do good Chancellors get promoted above their level of ability? Regardless of party or economic circumstances both institutional and political factors make it difficult for any modern Chancellor to make the transition to the Premiership.

For a start, the transition means surrendering control of the Treasury – still the most talented and the most organized department in Whitehall, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. Through the Treasury and the Revenue Departments the Chancellor has an executor and an enforcer of his decisions. He also, importantly, gets an automatic script to explain them. The Prime Minister has no comparable resource. His personal staff is small and temporary and it depends on other departments and agencies not only to execute the Prime Minister’s decisions but even to supply the basic information he needs to govern.

The Chancellor enjoys a defined sphere of responsibility. He is free to meddle in other areas when it suits him but is equally free to absent himself from controversial decisions outside the economy. (For this reason alone, a Chancellor is likely to arrive as Prime Minister with a legacy of quarrels and grudges from his Cabinet colleagues). The Chancellor enjoys a certain regularity and  rhythm in his work: his year is punctuated by the pre-Budget report, the Budget itself, economic statements and publication of statistics, international meetings and other set events. The Prime Minister is responsible for anything and everything and he may have to deal with a crisis at any time of day or night.

Although they often boast about their economic strategy, most modern Chancellors spend most of their time on non-strategic issues – either responding to short-term crises or immersed in the technical details of Budget changes and national expenditure. This too is a poor training for the modern Premiership, which demands vision and strategy from its occupant and the ability to communicate them.

Indeed, the public and media demands on the Premiership are altogether different from the Chancellorship. A Chancellor can get away with being a dull dog if he seems to understand his sums and be a good decision-maker. The public and the media want much more from the modern Prime Minister. Competence they take for granted (although they punish him savagely when it seems missing), but they also demand colour, drama, inspiration and empathy.

All of these transitional issues have hit Gordon Brown. However, the biggest problem for any Chancellor who becomes Prime Minister is that he cannot blame the last government for any economic crisis which overtakes the country. For Gordon Brown, the curse is heightened because he claimed as Chancellor to have transformed the British economy and made crisis a thing of the past. Voters are angry and frightened at what has happened to their living standards and they have punished him more savagely than they would have done another Prime Minister with no special claim to economic brilliance.

It may well be too late for Gordon Brown to take control of the crisis and restore his economic reputation. He may then come to rue his long reign as Chancellor. However, he might also take comfort from the afterlife of Prosperity Robinson. Elevated to Earl of Ripon, he returned to Cabinet (for a different party) under Lord Grey, and took the Bill which abolished slavery through the House of Lords. He later returned to his old party in Sir Robert Peel’s Cabinet, and took major tax reforms through the Lords.

There may be a curse on Chancellors who become Prime Minister, but it need not last for ever. Fallen Premiers can still pick themselves up and do a Ripon.