What Osborne meant

edwardbenson

Hmm. You say it was hardly a coded attack on Cameron, but if it looks like a coded attack and smells like a coded attack... At the very least, it looks like a pre-emptive move, designed to protect his own position if and when the Cameron project crumbles. ("I may be a moderniser, but I'm not one of the uber-modernisers who were really to blame for this whole mess.") Or maybe he's the one about to cross the floor?

Purple Scorpion

And read a demolition (not by me) here - http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/09/unter-moderniser.html

Tiberius

Yes, another successfully sold piece of New Labour spin: we have debates (which actually they don't), but the Tories have splits.

alex seymour

"It was hardly a coded attack on Cameron, whom he heaped praise on"

"Upon whom he heaped praise"....aint it?

Praguetory

There is no coded attack, but the interview is a bit thin. If all he can say about his Chancellory position is that it's David Cameron who decides who is shadow chancellor, not me, he should probably step down for someone with more focus on the task and put all his energies into his campaigning role. Good to hear him distance himself from the uber-modernisers, but actions speak louder than words and apart from his boss who in the party does he ally himself with?

Michael St George

Dear Fraser You give Osborne too much credit. Boy George has been very careful not to utter anything that goes as far as being potentially categorisable as a coded attack; however, this undoubtedly was the first tentative, precautionary putting of a little distance between himself and Right-On Dave against the possibility that, election or no, the Cameroon project will start to unravel as its intellectual vacuity and its electoral ineffectiveness becomes ever more obvious. If he seriously imagines that, when that happens, he might therefore be positioned for the leadeship, then he has even less qualification to aspire to the office of Chancellor than was suggested by his refusal to even countenance the possibility that John Redwood's tax proposals might just be correct.

Oscar Miller

I see this as the opposite of a 'coded attack'. Isn't Osborne preparing the ground for Cameron - who is already positioning himself at a distance from the 'uber modernizers'. There was an improvement in the polls when Cameron talked tougher on law and order and then talked about immigration in the Newsnight interview. I'd say Osborne is following an agreed strategy probably overseen by Andy Coulson. But of course nuLab media are out for tory splits and tory splits they will find - invented or not.

Mike Wotan Kaye

let's face it; any slight criticism of the "Dave Project", will be interpreted by all and sundry as a split or betrayal. The Cameron interlude will come to the end it deserves. And please chop down that gastly tree!