Well, that didn’t take long. George Osborne has had dinner with the FT and the write-up shows him as ambitious as ever. Having never held down a job outside of politics, the former Chancellor isn’t looking for one now. ‘I am not going anywhere,’ he said, ‘I want to see what happens next.’ It seems he is angling for Christine Lagarde’s job at the IMF, but the most striking quote is about his leadership ambitions:
‘Asked about a possible return to the front line, Mr Osborne adopted — with a twist — a phrase used by Mr Johnson in 2013 to deflect questions about his prime ministerial intentions: ‘If the ball came loose at the back of the scrum, I wouldn’t fumble it,’ Mr Osborne, 45, said.’
Mr S wonders if Osborne has realised what has just happened. He did fumble it. He backed the wrong side on the EU referendum and perhaps did more than anyone else on the Remain side to lose it by his threat of a punishment Budget. As for his absurd and untrue claim that Brexit would make people £4,300 worse-off? Polls showed that just 7 per cent of the country believed him — fewer than believe that Elvis is still alive.
So Osborne is, even now, having a go at Boris with that rugby analogy. But Boris is Foreign Secretary, and Osborne is on the backbenches – and both for a reason. The word ‘fumble’ doesn’t begin to describe what Osborne did to the Remain campaign. As Will Straw and Nick Clegg now both admit, his £4,300-worse-off intervention inflicted more damage on his side than any attack line from Vote Leave.
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