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George Osborne is describing the dark days of spring 1997 in No 10 Downing Street. “You just know when the power is draining away. We would phone up, say, the boss of the TUC and say: ‘The prime minister would like to see you today to discuss such and such,’ and they would reply that he was too busy because he was lunching with Blair.”
The shadow chancellor is strap-hanging on the underground, on his way to Crewe to campaign in the by-election. It’s odd to hear him speak so openly about the bleakest era in living Tory memory, given that the Conservatives are 20 points ahead in the polls and—consciously, jubilantly—on the verge of a famous by-election victory.
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