George Osborne has warned Theresa May that he will be the champion of “the liberal mainstream majority” as he questioned her policies on grammar schools and her “wobble” on the “northern powerhouse” initiative.

In his first broadcast interview since being sacked as chancellor by the new prime minister, Osborne signalled his ambition for a return to high office and made a series of pointed remarks about policies.

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Osborne said May had made a “strong start” as prime minister but offered her only lukewarm support and signalled that he would fight her from the backbenches on grammar schools and any moves towards a hard Brexit deal.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said he voted for May in the leadership race, but pointedly added: “I think she is the best person for the job of the candidates who put themselves forward.”

In the earlier interview, Osborne said he was not ready to follow David Cameron out of frontline politics. “I don’t want to write my memoirs because I don’t know how the story ends and I want to hang around and find out,” he said.



He suggested he would resist May’s plan for grammar schools from the backbenches. He said: “I have always thought with the debate about grammars that 80% of the political discussion is about where 20% of children go, when in fact we should be focusing on where 80% of the children go in a selective system. I think the real focus of education reform remains the academy programme, transforming the comprehensive schools that most people send their children to.”

He positioned himself as a pro-European centrist rival to May’s government, saying: “I will be championing ... the liberal mainstream majority of this country … who do not want to be governed from the extremes, who want Britain to be internationalists, outward-looking, free-trading, who want a socially just society. That is the cause that I believe in.”



He denied he disliked May after the former energy minister Ed Davey claimed he had repeatedly clashed with her when they were cabinet colleagues. After being played a clip of Davey’s remarks, he said: “I have worked with Theresa for 20 years in opposition and in government. I think she is a person of real integrity and intelligence and, frankly, in a cabinet that included Ed Davey she was one of the grownups.”

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In Manchester to launch the new Northern Powerhouse Partnership on Friday, which he will chair, Osborne said the idea was “here to stay”.

May has barely mentioned the “northern powerhouse” idea since becoming prime minister. She has spoken instead of a broader “proper” industrial strategy, nationwide, rather than a regional focus solely on the north.

Osborne said: “To be honest, there was a little bit of a wobble, when we had the new administration about whether they were still committed to the concept of the northern powerhouse.”

“We need to support economic development across the whole of the country. I sweated blood to get a [directly elected] mayor for Birmingham ... but in the north of England there is a particular opportunity.”

Osborne said May was “perfectly entitled to take a pause” over big decisions such as the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant. But he pointed out that the revised deal the government announced on Thursday was essentially the same as the one he had struck.

“I am very pleased we are going ahead with the Hinkley power plant. I don’t think anything has fundamentally changed from the deal that we put together in government just a few months ago,” he said.

Osborne said he would “not necessarily” be a distraction to May’s government. And he said being out of a job had given him a chance to reflect on past mistakes and the future challenges. He said: “I was shadow chancellor at the age of 33 and for over 11 years I’ve been travelling at about 100 miles an hour every day.

“I’m not pretending this is where I thought I would end up this summer. But actually plan B is quite enjoyable and it has given me chance of doing something that is very difficult to do in government, which is think again about where I made mistakes, think about the big problems that lie ahead for our country and the big challenges.”

He said he did not regret making dire economic warnings about Brexit. “I definitely did not get right my judgment of the national mood. I don’t think I properly understood the alienation that many people felt, not just from the European Union, but the establishment.

Later, speaking at the official launch of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, his business-backed thinktank, he revealed he had not spoken to May about the project, but insisted she supported rebalancing power away from London towards the northern cities and counties.

Asked by the Guardian whether May had met him to discuss the project, Osborne said: “No, I’ve spoken to Sajid Javid, who is the communities secretary, about this initiative and talked to him about that.”

He insisted it wasn’t a concern that he had not spoken to or met May to discuss her views on the initiative. “Having spent six years in Downing Street, that’s not the way it works. You approach the relevant cabinet minister, which is Sajid Javid, and you speak to him about it.”

He added: “Of course, when you get a new government, a new administration, you want to see what are the ideas on the table, do they want to proceed with them all. And they thought about the northern powerhouse but they have now committed to it. Theresa May has committed to it, Sajid Javid has committed to it and across the government there are people whose previous roles were involved in building the northern powerhouse.”

During the event at Manchester town hall, Osborne awas asked whether he felt that as a lowly backbencher he wouldn’t be listened to, and had concluded he would have more power if he founded the thinktank. He said. “I think as a backbench MP and a member of parliament for the north of England, I can help as well bring the private sector together, bring civic leaders of the north of England together. Because in the end if we are just going to rely on Whitehall for all the decisions then that is not going to work for the north of England.”