George Osborne has much to ponder this morning. First, there is the small matter of his evidence to the Leveson Inquiry later today (assuming that someone can check Gordon Brown’s loquacity), which will prove diverting for those who remain gripped by those proceedings.
Then there is the larger matter of the £80bn Spanish bank bailout. Osborne has welcomed the rescue, arguing that the Eurozone must survive and thrive if Britain is to prosper. His analysis is that the crisis on the continent is impeding domestic recovery. Fraser argued yesterday that this is a half-truth which verges on being a conceit. A number of Conservative backbenchers share Fraser’s scepticism and they have loosed-off volleys of criticism at the chancellor in today’s press.
The usual suspects are in good voice — Douglas Carswell and David Davis have each made a telling contribution. And the increasingly critical Treasury select committeeman, David Ruffley, who was special advisor to Ken Clarke between 1991 and 1996, has dismissed George Osborne’s analysis as a ‘simple alibi’. He went on to say, ‘We should create infrastructure bonds to attract private sector capital and go much further in deregulating the labour market.’The calls for supply-side reform have become growing more numerous, and more pointed. The party leadership may want the next election to be determined by promising to settle the European Union issue with a referendum. But many backbenchers plainly think that matters will be decided by the economy.
Many attacks on the near-duumvirate at the head of the Tory party have the appearance of being planned: the anonymous MP’s hatchet job in last Sunday’s Mail is a case in point. But this latest assault exudes spontaneity. Some of the quotes in today’s papers (Carswell’s for instance) actually appeared on MPs’ personal websites yesterday, prompted by Osborne’s transparent blame game as laid out in his op-ed for the Sunday Telegraph.
Osborne, an architect of the Cameron project, has a sizeable base in the parliamentary party (which has been conspicuous by its silence in the last 24 hours or so). But, equally, there has always been a sect of dissenters who do not worship at the Church of Modernisation, politicians who feel that the creed preached there is a little too thin to win mass appeal. This sect seems to be gaining strength, and it won’t tolerate a second electoral failure.
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