George Osborne has suggested that Rachel Reeves is the “heir to David Cameron” – and himself – as he predicted Labour will win the next election.
The shadow chancellor channelled another former Tory leader, Margaret Thatcher, during part of a major speech on the economy last week.
The former chancellor once famously called Lord Cameron, now the foreign secretary, the “heir to Blair”.
At the time, he says, “the Tory refuseniks were appalled”.
But, he adds in a diary for The Spectator magazine, “moving on from lost battles is the key to future success”.
In government, he says, he and Lord Cameron “accepted parts of the Blair inheritance – social liberalism, the minimum wage and so on, just as Blair had before him accepted the Thatcher inheritance of union laws and the market economy”.
The same pattern can now be seen in the current shadow chancellor, he suggests.
“Now Reeves is saying she wants to strengthen the Office for Budget Responsibility I introduced, adopt austere fiscal rules and won’t put up corporation tax,” he points out, asking: “Is she the heir to Cameron/Osborne?”
Elsewhere, Mr Osborne, once widely seen as the man most likely to replace Lord Cameron as prime minister, predicts Labour is “going to win” the looming general election.
It comes after a polling guru put Labour’s chances of securing the keys to No 10 at 99 per cent. In a blow to the Tories, Sir John Curtice said the chances the Conservatives could turn around their dire poll ratings was small, and added: “The Labour Party will be in a much stronger position to negotiate a minority government than the Conservatives because, apart from possibly the DUP, the Conservatives have no friends in the House of Commons.”
Labour has consistently been 20 points ahead in the polls.
The PM is also facing an exodus from his party after two cabinet ministers quit ahead of stepping down as MPs at the general election.
A total of 63 Conservative MPs, including former PM Theresa May, have now said publicly they will not stand the next time around.
A Labour source dismissed the “heir to Cameron” claims as “rubbish”. They added: “A claim that has about as much credibility as Osborne’s campaign for David Cameron to be Labour’s foreign secretary. And it’s because of the OBR we know the damage five Conservative prime ministers have done to the economy.”