In October 1974 Thatcher was 50/1 to be the next Tory leader. Less than four months later, she became Tory leader pic.twitter.com/OiALS7dNSI

— TSE (@TSEofPB) September 5, 2015

The favourite this far out seldom wins the Tory leadership – Will Osborne be any different?

In an interview with the Guardian today Sir Vince Cable predicts that George Osborne will be the next Prime Minister. Sir Vince like Mark Antony comes to bury Osborne, not praise him by saying Osborne is “extremely shrewd politically, very cynical” and “The economy turned out all right, but I don’t think that was because of [Osborne].”

Osborne’s chances of succeeding Cameron are linked to the performance of economy and the outcome of the EU referendum. Were the economy to experience a downturn you can see the chances of him succeeding lengthening. A fractious EU referendum might see the Tory party revert to the bad old habits of the 90s where a significant part of the party obsessed about the European Union to the detriment of everything else.

Ever since the Conservative Party started electing their leaders a pattern has emerged that the long standing favourite doesn’t win and the eventual winner turns out to be someone who was a real outsider a few months/eighteen months before the contest. A few months ago Boris was the overwhelming favourite to be Cameron’s successor but he seems  destined to join Willie Whitelaw, Michael Heseltine, Michael Portillo, Kenneth Clarke and David Davis in the favourites that never became Tory leader club.

One of the consequences were Labour to elect Jeremy Corbyn as leader and he turns out as bad as many expect then a lot of Tory MPs who normally wouldn’t be considering running for the leadership will consider doing so as they consider the 2020 general election as a nailed on Tory win. The more candidates that stand in the Tory leadership contest the more uncertain the final result is my thinking.

In 2005 Osborne declined to run for the Tory leadership he may elect to do the same next time, he seems much more comfortable being the éminence grise to Tory leaders, first David Cameron and maybe next Sajid Javid. History suggests it might be the optimum time to lay Osborne as next Tory leader.

The aspect of the interview I agree with Sir Vince is ‘Historically, the coalition will be seen as a success.’ That should help the Lib Dems recover in the polls and maybe in terms of parliamentary seats as well as other non Westminster elections.

You can read the full Sir Vince Cable interview here.

TSE