George Osborne is having a good summer. He got in first with wooing the new intake of Tory MPs, to the extent that many of them seem slightly besotted with the warm and friendly Chancellor who welcomes them cheerily to drinks events. He humiliated Boris Johnson with jokes about his ‘dilapidated’ campaign bunker – and was at the very least rather pleased that Theresa May ended up humiliating the Mayor by refusing to approve the use of water cannon in London. Now he’s top of the ConHome Tory leader survey for the first time. The Chancellor has risen nine points and got the support of 30.9 per cent of the 700 Tory members surveyed, ahead of Sajid Javid on 18.7 per cent and Johnson on 16.6 per cent.
This is ideal for Osborne, who many suspect would like to use Javid as an aid in the leadership contest before winning in the final round. Knocking Boris back so quickly after his rival entered the Commons helps his credibility.
As Ross writes in this week’s magazine, the Chancellor has been working for a good long time on building up his power base in Parliament. His supporters are prominent, not least because being a friend of George means you get promoted and talked up by the Chancellor as part of his formidable system of patronage.
That the members are starting to see Osborne as a strong leadership candidate too is in part down to the recovering economy and general election victory as well as his efforts to improve his image. This has amused some Tory MPs, who don’t begrudge the Chancellor his haircut or weight loss, but have noticed that he seems to have a strange phobia of standing near chandeliers when visiting their constituencies. This isn’t because he has watched Phantom of the Opera too many times, but because he doesn’t want to be photographed in what looks like a ‘posh’ setting. Much better to light up the room in a high-vis jacket.
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