George Osborne

George Osborne: I tried to swap jobs with William Hague

I could be that rare thing: a former chancellor who is still a member of the Conservative party. Philip Hammond has lost the whip and will be expelled if he stands for election again. Ditto Ken Clarke. How times change. I remember a time when we were desperate to get Ken into the tent, not kick him out. Back in 2008, we wanted him to join our shadow cabinet. Tory wars had consigned us to opposition and we needed to end them. The negotiations were conducted in secret in case he said ‘no’, so we agreed to meet at my house rather than Westminster. It was all very cloak and dagger, or supposed to be. But then Ken didn’t show up. After a while, I went out on the street to look for him. There I found the ex-chancellor standing in his Hush Puppies in busy Notting Hill struggling to pay for his parking by mobile phone. I paid instead, hurried him inside and he joined the team. Eleven years later and Ken is one of the 21 Conservative MPs who have been fired. Apparently they got messages on their mobile phones: your parking on the Tory benches has expired. Obviously the expulsions can’t stand. The Tory party stands no chance in an election if it’s running against itself.

William Hague could have been another ex-chancellor. I offered to swap jobs with him in 2014, when he was stepping down as foreign secretary. If he’d said yes we could have had a Hague government after the referendum two years later. It’s one of the ‘revelations’ in David Cameron’s memoirs, For the Record, that are published next week. Don’t worry, there are more juicy ones than that. I’m sure the nutters from all sides will pile in. But I suspect reading the chronicle of moderate, reforming government will make readers nostalgic.

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