The whispers in Parliament are focused on whether or not David Cameron will face a leadership challenge once the result of the EU vote is known.
Should this come to pass, there are two names invariably quoted by commentators as being the final two, to be put before the membership for a vote – Boris Johnson and George Osborne.
However, the pundits only have it half right. Osborne will not be one of the two names.
George Osborne has never been naturally popular with voters or fellow MPs and he is becoming less sellable as future leader and Prime Minister by the day
Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had a famous understanding known as the Granita agreement. They once met in a restaurant of the same name and decided who would lead the Labour Party for as far into the future as they could see. I believe the same thing happened in the Conservative Party.
Michael Howard, David Cameron, George Osborne, and in the background, Oliver Letwin, forged a similar plan for the future Tory leadership. Boris was never included. I believe, as a result of his unconventional upbringing and scholarship-won education, he was not quite top drawer enough – and yet, he was always seen as a threat.
These men decided that the party belonged not to its members, whom they did not trust, but by a right of birth, privilege and connection, it belonged to them. A missile was fired in 2005, when Howard tried to remove the ‘one member, one vote’ rule for appointing a new party leader. Cameron and Osborne were at his side. They failed.
The alternative of only MPs having a vote suits Osborne who, as a result of privilege and contacts, has levered himself into a position of power. He has deployed patronage in the form of jobs and seats in the Lords to buy loyalty from MPs who, with no privilege, can only climb the greasy pole by selling their principles to the party leadership.
But no amount of cynical calculation can hide the obvious: Osborne has never been naturally popular with voters or fellow MPs, and he is becoming less sellable as a future leader and Prime Minister by the day.
HIS decision to abandon his plan to raid the pension pots of millions of middle-class workers is the latest evidence. On one level, he had no choice: he knew he faced a devastating backlash. But Osborne, the arch plotter, would have also realised many of the decent, hard-working people affected were grassroots Conservative Party members who will vote in the next leadership contest.
He has already alienated most by campaigning to stay in the EU when they want to leave. And until yesterday, he was about to grab a few billion pounds from their hard-earned pension pots.
However, if Osborne thinks his pensions U-turn will be enough to help him defeat Boris, he is wrong. No one knows when the Tory leadership contest will take place. However, if – as I sincerely hope and expect – Britain votes to leave the EU, Cameron’s position will become untenable.
Given Boris’s mass appeal with voters on all political sides, it is inconceivable that he will not be on the final ballot
There would be an immediate period of negotiation on new trade deals, not just with Europe but with markets open to us in a way they have not been since we first joined the European Economic Community in 1973.
The person who embarks on this process on behalf of UK PLC cannot be someone who does not believe in our sovereignty. Who failed to renegotiate our membership terms in a way that was of tangible benefit to the British public.
If leaving the EU meant the sky would fall down, as the scaremongers would have us believe, why on earth did Cameron place us in the position of that possibility ever happening?
The PM has already said he will resign before the next Election. If we vote to leave the EU he will have to resign immediately. Which brings me back to Boris and George. The person who reportedly forced Osborne to backtrack on his savings raid was a woman, pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann. And I believe it is from the growing ranks of Conservative women in the Commons that the contender to challenge Boris will emerge.
We now have 68 female Tory MPs in Parliament. A smart, well-educated and streetwise lot, many are feminists. Ironically, many owe their place in Parliament to the A-list, introduced by Cameron and Osborne to bring in more female MPs.
But that doesn’t mean they can be relied upon to vote slavishly for the leadership. They have seen how effective the Labour sisterhood can be. Now the same thing is happening on the Tory benches – something Osborne does not seem to have noticed.
Given Boris’s mass appeal with voters on all political sides, it is inconceivable that he will not be on the final ballot. Furthermore, he believes in Brexit and refused to be bribed into becoming Foreign Secretary. He is out there fighting for Britain, putting people first.
That is why I believe the second name on the ballot will be a woman who, like Boris, appeals to Tory grassroots supporters.
I fear Theresa May could suffer the same fate as Osborne. Having paraded her Eurosceptic credentials for years, when it came to the crunch she caved in and backed Project Fear.
Tory Ministers Andrea Leadsom and Priti Patel may not be as well known as Mrs May, but they soon will be. Both have displayed the courage to ignore pressure from Downing Street and argue the case for Brexit.
Make no mistake, these bright, ambitious, principled women have leadership potential.
Downing Street’s Project Fear is as much to do with Osborne’s leadership hopes disintegrating as it is with false claims of Britain falling apart if we leave the EU. I believe we are witnessing the unravelling of Dave and George’s Granita pact. And so we should be. After all, Labour’s plan came to fruition: Brown became Prime Minister, and it was a disaster. The Tories must not make the same mistake.
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