Michael Heseltine had a very simple rule. Give me economic growth, the former deputy prime minister used to say, and I will deliver you political success.
The truth of the Heseltine rule has been on display in recent weeks. As the political world counted down to confirmation on Thursday of improved economic growth – the first consecutive quarters of growth since 2011 – the fortunes of George Osborne and David Cameron improved immeasurably.
Cameron has had a strong run at prime minister's questions over the past month and heads off on holiday as the pre-eminent figure on the political stage because his MPs believe the chancellor is at last delivering the private-sector recovery he promised in his emergency budget in June 2010.
Cameron and Osborne may have had something of a swagger about them in recent weeks as they watched Labour embark on a difficult – and not wholly successful – change of tack on fiscal policy. But their confidence is in sharp contrast to Osborne's dark mood in private last year and into the early part of this year.
The chancellor was genuinely worried that the apparent failure of his plan to trim back the public sector and to preside over a private-sector recovery was weakening him and hobbling the government. He often appeared nervous and ill at ease in public and, strangely for such a confident figure, would ask how he was doing.
Osborne's personal uncertainty has evaporated, for the moment at least, and the Osborne operation is sharpening up, helped by the arrival of the former BBC producer Thea Rogers who has a beady eye for pictures that tell a positive story.
Overnight the chancellor made visits to teams working on M6 improvements and to a 24/7 Tesco depot, tweeting updates with the hashtag #hardworking. Rogers hasn't left anything to chance: visiting nightshift workers at the Warburtons bakery, Osborne sported a baseball cap to avoid pictures of him in a hairnet.
This highlights the care with which the Osborne team has prepared for this moment. Wary of the experience of Norman Lamont, who was lampooned for talking about the "green shoots of economic spring", Osborne initially said the economy was simply healing. He now says it is "on the mend".
But it will not be plain sailing for Osborne between now and the general election in 2015. If growth stumbles, his nerves will return.
Ed Balls, who is visiting Washington to launch a transatlantic growth commission with the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, is still on Osborne's case. Balls welcomed the growth but said it appeared to be benefiting only higher-income groups and was overdue.
Osborne will also have to answer a question raised even by some of his closest allies: why did he outline a deficit reduction plan in his emergency budget of 2010 that appeared to fit a political rather than economic timetable?
Osborne said in 2010 that he hoped to eliminate the structural budget deficit by 2015. One ally said the plan was flawed from the start because Britain was recovering from a once-in-a-half-century financial crash rather than a typical recession. It usually takes eight to 10 years to recover from a crash, meaning 2018 was a more realistic goal. This is now Osborne's target date.
No doubt Osborne will have a handy answer to criticisms that his political double is Gordon Brown, the last chancellor for whom politics trumped everything else.
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