People are poorer than at the last election and all Hunt can do is hope | Larry Elliott

Economic upticks are welcome but they won't help the chancellor's chances of retaining his seat

Some chancellors are sacked. Some are forced to resign. Some exchange the green benches of the House of Commons for the red benches of the Lords. But not in living memory has a chancellor lost his seat at a general election.

If opinion polls are accurate, Jeremy Hunt will break that tradition, with the Liberal Democrats on course to take his newly created Godalming and Ash seat in Surrey. The last time the Conservatives were on the wrong end of a landslide, Kenneth Clarke, then chancellor, held his Nottinghamshire seat reasonably comfortably. Hunt has a real fight on his hands.