Osborne says Theresa May is a 'dead woman walking'

Political reporter(wp):

George Osborne has called Theresa May “a dead woman walking” and suggested the prime minister would be forced to resign imminently.

The former chancellor said he did not expect to back the prime minister for much longer. “I think we will know very shortly. We could easily get to the middle of next week and it all collapses for her,” he said.

Osborne said the campaign had undone the work of himself and former prime minister David Cameron in winning socially liberal seats such as Bath, Brighton Kemptown and Oxford East, now lost to Labour and the Lib Dems.

“She is a dead woman walking and the only question is how long she remains on death row,” the editor of the Evening Standard said, defending his paper’s attacks on May as speaking from a “socially liberal, pro-business, economically liberal position” that he said had been consistent as editor and chancellor.

Asked if Boris Johnson was in a position to replace her, Osborne also mocked the foreign secretary whom he said was “in a permanent leadership campaign”.

Speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Osborne said he and Cameron had spent “years getting back to office, winning in seats like Bath and Brighton and Oxford and I am angry when we go backwards and I am not afraid to say that”.

Osborne said the Conservatives’ political strategist Lynton Crosby, blamed by May’s advisers for an overly negative, presidential-style campaign with robotic slogans, had been undermined by the prime minister’s own flaws.

Crosby ran two successful campaigns for the Conservatives when Cameron was elected in 2010 and 2015. “They are professionals,” Osborne said, blaming May’s “failure to communicate and a disastrous manifesto”.

Osborne said blame should be on the shoulders of May, though her advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill resigned on Saturday. “You can’t just blame the advisers. The only person who decides to have an election is the prime minister, the person who decides what’s in the manifesto is the prime minister.”

The former chancellor has a long enmity with the prime minister, who sacked him the day after she was elected Conservative leader, telling him to “get to know the party better”.

As editor of the Evening Standard, Osborne’s paper has repeatedly attacked the May government for its stance on Brexit, especially the apparent willingness in Downing Street to control immigration at cost to the British economy.

In one savage editorial, the paper said the Tory campaign had “meandered from an abortive attempt to launch a personality cult around Mrs May to the self-inflicted wound of the most disastrous manifesto in recent history”.

Brexit negotiations “could not have got off to a worse start”, the paper argued, citing “high-handed British arrogance” as part of the problem. The newspaper did endorse the Conservatives ahead of the election, but in a symbolic twist on election night, the Conservative stronghold of Kensington, which houses the Evening Standard offices, fell to Labour by 20 votes.

During election night as a pundit on ITV, Osborne spent the evening taking pot shots at May and the Conservative campaign as the results rolled in.

“The manifesto which was drafted by her and about two other people was a total disaster and must go down now as one of the worst manifestos in history by a governing party,” he said. “I say one of the worst, I can’t think of a worse one.”

On Sunday, Osborne praised the performance of the Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, calling her “the heroine of the party ... if she had not won seats in Scotland there would not be a Conservative government and Jeremy Corbyn would be in Downing Street”.

Osborne called for Davidson to “flex her muscles” over Brexit and push to prioritise the economy and free trade. “I think there is no majority in the House of Commons for a hard Brexit and if the Ruth Davidsons of the party are starting to flex their muscles, in my view that is only a good thing.”

However, Osborne said the party had no choice but to do a deal with the Democratic Unionist party despite its attitudes to social issues such as gay marriage and abortion. “I reject all of those views personally, but the Tory party doesn’t have a choice in order to get a majority,” he said.

The party would be “basically at the whim [of the DUP] on every vote ... you have to negotiate every line item of the budget with them,” Osborne said.

“The DUP need a Brexit deal, they are absolutely committed to no hard border with the Republic of Ireland. Therefore the position that no deal is better than a bad deal is untenable because DUP would never allow no deal. There is not a parliamentary majority for no deal.”

Osborne also said May’s speech on her return to Downing Street had caused further upset within the party. “The Tory party was absolutely furious that Theresa May failed to acknowledge the loss and suffering of many MPs,” he said.