‘Don’t write me off’: Osborne hints at political comeback

FORMER Chancellor George Osborne is clearly not giving up hope of making a political comeback.

The Tory MP, who had his sights set on the Conservative Party leadership before his ambitions were dashed by the referendum, says he has ruled out writing his autobiography because there is more petrol in his political tank.

‘I don’t think now is the right time for me to write a memoir. It’s too soon,’ Osborne, 45, tells me.

‘You can’t write a memoir until you know what happens next, and hopefully, there’s more to do before I start looking back.’

Osborne, who lives in Notting Hill with his novelist wife Frances and their two children, says he’s been humbled by his relegation to the backbenches after he was sacked by new PM Theresa May. As well he might.

The chief architect of Project Fear has been humiliated by the Brexit vote and many of his dire prognostications failed to come to pass.

At the launch party this week for the Science Museum’s Wonderlab exhibition, where he received a fellowship, he admitted: ‘I told my daughter that

I was going to be coming to the Science Museum, and she said: “Does that mean we can skip the queue to get in?”

‘And I said: “Unfortunately, darling, those days are behind us.”’

Osborne might also have been deterred by the lukewarm response to the proposed memoirs of his chum David Cameron. Bidding for the expremier’s life story fell far short of the £2 million target wanted by his literary agent and offers were said to be between £500,000 and £800,000.

His refusal to depart the political stage could heighten any pre-existing tensions he has with May, whom he recently criticised for her focus on her grammar schools policy.

When May succeeded Cameron after his six-year premiership, Osborne, who did not put himself in the running for the top post, delivered a backhanded compliment by saying she was ‘the best person for the job of the candidates who put themselves forward’.

The former alumnus of St Paul’s school, however, could have other reasons for not wanting to revisit his past, given his alleged friendship with former dominatrix Natalie Rowe, aka ‘Miss Whiplash’, who said he snorted cocaine in the 1990s — a claim he strongly denies.