Osborne suggests Reeves is his and Cameron's 'heir'

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.

- KATE DEVLIN

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.