Look out! Osborne hints he’s plotting a political comeback

GEORGE Osborne opened the door to a political comeback yesterday as he claimed Theresa May would be forced out before the next election. The former Chancellor, who was sacked by Mrs May last year, also warned that pro-Remain Tory MPs would force her to soften her stance on Brexit.

He said ‘the votes are not there’ to take Britain out of the EU’s customs union. Mr Osborne stepped down from Parliament at the election this year after landing a job as editor of the London Evening Standard.

But speaking to journalists at a Westminster lunch yesterday, he suggested he still had political ambitions. Asked if he might return as an MP, Mr Osborne replied: ‘I don’t rule it out.’ He insisted he was enjoying new challenges, but added: ‘You can be foolish saying never to things.’

He also refused to rule out a possible bid to become the next Tory Mayor of London. The former Chancellor insisted his attacks on Mrs May were not motivated by bitterness, but because she was taking the party in the ‘wrong direction’. He said he had voted for her to become leader even though he knew there was a ‘50:50 chance I would not remain in office’.

He added: ‘I have put my whole adult life into the Conservative movement and if I see the Conservative movement heading in the wrong direction I’m going to say something about it – and more and more people are saying something about it.’

Asked if he regretted his

comment about wanting Mrs May ‘chopped up in bags in my freezer’ – for which he has already made a partial apology – Mr Osborne replied: ‘It’s taught me a few things about editorial conference meetings.’ He said there was a ‘consensus’ among Tory MPs that Mrs May should never be allowed to fight another General Election.

Mr Osborne remains closely linked to pro-Remain Tory MPs who are trying to frustrate Brexit in Parliament.

Yesterday he predicted they would ultimately be successful in preventing the UK leaving the customs union.

He said the Tories would eventually be forced to pursue a ‘softer form of Brexit’ and warned the PM didn’t ‘have the votes’ for a harder option.

Mr Osborne was the architect of the discredited Project Fear campaign during the EU referendum. Yesterday he insisted that his predictions had ‘ broadly speaking stood the test of time’, but acknowledged the Remain campaign had lost because ‘we looked like the Establishment’.

Mr Osborne also warned the Tories not to retreat from the modernisation programme he pursued with David Cameron. He said: ‘If we present ourselves to the country as antimodern, anti-immigrant, antiurban, anti-Metropolitan then huge sections of the country will be anti us.’

Aiming his fire at Labour, the former Chancellor said Jeremy Corbyn was the ‘biggest obstacle’ to his party winning the next election.

‘It’s foolish to say never’