Former chancellor says his 90s style of politics now belongs to the ‘dinosaur age’

George Osborne has expressed his admiration for leftwing Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, saying that politicians who fail to copy her online campaigning tactics now belong to a “dinosaur age”.

The former Conservative chancellor, who is now editor of the London Evening Standard, called the first-term congresswoman “one of the most famous politicians in the world” and said she was part of a movement which had destroyed the old political order with her understanding of social media.

“I became pretty good at the form of politics that emerged in the 1990s in response to 24-hour news channels. The scripted soundbite. The good backdrop. The ruthless message discipline. It helped me and the team I was part of win two general elections,” he said.

“But by 2017, when I left parliament, it was a style of politics that looked like it belonged to the dinosaur age. There are still plenty of politicians wandering around practising it, but they are facing extinction.”

Osborne also said that the Conservative party with a “dwindling elderly membership based on a model of constituency associations from the Victorian age” could be facing destruction as a result of a failure to understand how the world had changed.

Osborne, who shocked Westminster when he quit politics to become editor of the London newspaper two years ago, also said he always wanted to be the European commissioner for competition. Osborne said the job was attractive because it came with the power to stand up to the likes of Facebook – a role which would have pitted him against Nick Clegg, his former coalition colleague who is now the social network’s lobbying chief.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest George Osborne (right) with Nick Clegg in 2011. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

He suggested that the government should give people ownership of their own internet data in order to undermine the market dominance of sites such as Facebook which profit from holding details about their users.

“If the consumers owned their data, rather than one or two big producers, then we could all compete for their custom, and their data would follow,” he said, echoing proposals made last summer by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, about removing control of user data from Facebook.

Osborne made the comments on Thursday night in a lecture to the London Press Club given in memory of the former Mirror editor Hugh Cudlipp. He also said that the future of British newspapers was under threat.

Osborne, who has come under criticism for holding multiple jobs while editing a newspaper that is covering the fallout of his own decision to impose austerity measures on the country, insisted that concerns about fake news were pushing people back to traditional outlets.

He also said newspapers were less influential in elections than people believed and that aggressive interviews with politicians were often pointless – perhaps remembering an uncomfortable appearance on Newsnight last year when he was asked about Brexit and welfare cuts. He also said the press baron Rupert Murdoch once agreed that his newspapers were too anti-immigration.

“It was great sport to watch when this aggressive approach first appeared in the 1960s with the likes of Robin Day on TV, but half a century later I wonder what good it’s done other than chase both politics and journalism down to the bottom of the league table of professions the public trusts.

“I did many of those interviews and few I felt provided much illumination for the audience. You don’t have to treat democratic politicians as criminals to be a journalist of integrity. But nor should you regard them as messiahs.”

He also suggested that the BBC should turn itself into a Netflix-style subscription service. As chancellor, Osborne helped drive the tough 2015 licence fee deal with the BBC, ending the state subsidy for free licences for over-75s and loading the cost on to the broadcaster – creating a financial headache for the BBC.