Former chancellor and current Evening Standard editor says his ‘tough’ stance towards Tory party has surprised old colleagues

Millions of British people are unhappy with the political choices being offered to them by the two main parties over Brexit, the former chancellor, George Osborne, has said.

Osborne, who now edits London’s Evening Standard, said some of his former Conservative colleagues had expressed their surprise that his newspaper, which has repeatedly criticised Theresa May, took such a tough stance.

“People say to me, ‘hold on, that’s very unfair, you’re a Conservative and you used to be in the Conservative cabinet, you’re being a bit mean,’” Osborne told the Advertising Week Europe conference in central London.

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Osborne, who was chancellor for six years before being sacked by May and who stepped down as an MP shortly after taking the Evening Standard job a year ago, said he aimed for the paper to fill “a big, vacated space” in the political landscape “which is, essentially, saying we don’t actually have to have either Jeremy Corbyn or Jacob Rees-Mogg in this country - we can have something in the middle”.

He said this gap existed more generally: “On Brexit, I’m actually socking it as much to the Corbynites as I am to the hard Brexiteers. And that’s because I think there are millions of people in this city and around Britain who are not happy with the choice they’re being presented with at the moment.”

Saying that he was “essentially unbiddable” when it came to political pressure, Osborne said his former job allowed him to help the paper’s reporters uncover stories.

“My role now is to get to things which, in my previous job, I would not have told you,” he said. “I have a little bit of an advantage because I know where to look. I can say to my political team, ‘you go and find out this; I bet if you spoke to this person, who’s not obvious, you might find something interesting’.”

We don’t actually have to have either Jeremy Corbyn or Jacob Rees-Mogg in this country

This had not always gone down very well with former colleagues, Osborne explained: “One of the things that has surprised people in my former profession, the Conservative party, is that I’m pretty tough on them.

“I’m pretty tough also on the leadership of the Labour party. People might have expected that but they have not expected that critical line of mine on things the government is doing, for example in the Brexit space.”

Osborne reiterated that while he remained a Conservative, there was no guarantee the paper would take the same view: “If you assume that we are just going to back some (London) mayoral candidate on 2020 just because they’re a Conservative, forget it.”

He said the newspaper would make a judgment on behalf of the people of London on “whether Sadiq Khan should get our support for a second term, or whether the Conservative candidate gets that”.

The former chancellor dismissed the idea that the editorship was merely a springboard for a return to politics: “I’m going to stick around, because I’m having a great time.”