Osborne rules

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[/audioplayer]Against the heavy artillery fire of the Labour leadership battle, the struggle of the Conservative leadership contest goes almost undetected outside Westminster. It is no less intense, even though the Conservatives will not elect a new leader for at least three years. After a week of the parliamentary recess, there is no question about who is winning. This week, for the first time, George Osborne overtook Boris Johnson as William Hill’s favourite.

Not so long ago, Osborne was a mere limpet on David Cameron’s wetsuit, clinging on thanks to the patronage of his boss. Booed at the 2012 Paralympics while Johnson was cheered, the Chancellor seemed too tainted by the charge of austerity to contemplate ever becoming Prime Minister. His budget that year had unravelled, with hasty backpedalling on the pasty tax and VAT on static caravans, which, combined with the lowering of the upper rate of income tax to 45 per cent, had played to Osborne’s weakness: that he looks and sounds like a posh kid without Cameron’s paternalistic regard for the poor.

Yet now Osborne sits like an octopus over Westminster, his legs and tentacles reaching into every corner of government and the Conservative party. Another limb reached the Champs-Élysées last Sunday when, in his role as Cameron’s deputy, he presented Chris Froome with the winner’s trophy for the Tour de France.

Osborne is on a charm offensive. While Cameron rose to power despite a cold and distant attitude towards his backbenchers, the Chancellor has been assiduously courting new MPs since the election. Early on, they were invited for sandwiches at the Treasury. At one event, according to a new MP, he went around the room boasting of how many of his former advisers or political private secretaries had become ministers in the post-election reshuffle — friends such as Amber Rudd, the climate change secretary, Sam Gyimah, the childcare minister, and Greg Hands, now number two in the Treasury.