George Osborne has told the Conservative Party to stop “blaming others” for the mistakes it has made during 13 years in power.
“There are some Conservatives who blame ‘the blob’ and the civil servants and the establishment,” the former chancellor said on Friday.
“We’ve been in office since 2010, we’re in charge of our country’s destiny, and we should stop blaming others if we don’t get things right.”
Osborne was speaking to the Tory Northern Research Group (NRG) conference in Doncaster.
Osborne’s intervention will be seen as a direct response to Jake Berry, the former party chairman who heads the group.
Berry today said the Conservatives had been held back by “the blob” getting in the way.
“Blobonomics is the political classes that you don’t know, or you’ve often never voted for, wanting to control your life,” he wrote in The Times.
He said resistance from “the economic elite comprising senior civil servants, bankers, and politicians” had held the country back.
It is not the first time Osborne has had harsh words for his party since leaving parliament.
In April he labelled the Liz Truss government “political vandals” who caused a “self-induced financial crisis”.
The NRG is a group of Tory MPs focused on not losing the so-called red wall to Labour at the next election.
Boris Johnson’s 2019 election victory in part rested on sweeping victories in traditional Labour northern heartlands.
But polls suggest Keir Starmer is on course to recapture many if not all of those seats at the next election, which is expected in 2024.