Boris Johnson used a phone call with the US president, Donald Trump, this week to recommend the former Tory chancellor George Osborne for the job of managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
The vacancy at the Washington-based lender was created by the resignation of Christine Lagarde, who will move to Frankfurt to run the European Central Bank (ECB).
Osborne stepped down as MP for Tatton after being sacked as chancellor by Theresa May following the EU referendum in 2016 and accepting the editorship of the London-based Evening Standard.
He has taken up a series of other lucrative roles since leaving Westminster, including as an adviser to the world’s largest investment firm, BlackRock, and chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a thinktank.
As the architect of austerity and a leading advocate of remain during the referendum campaign, Osborne remains a divisive figure, but he and Johnson appear to have buried the hatchet in recent months.
David Blanchflower, an economist and former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, said: “I would prefer a random person picked on Oxford Street than slasher Osborne, who was the worst chancellor ever, who produced the slowest recovery in 300 years and third slowest in 600 after the South Sea Bubble and the Black Death.
“Failed reckless austerity lowered living standards and destroyed growth and ultimately was a major factor behind Brexit. Contrary to what Osborne claimed we were not ‘all in this together’.”
The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn warned recently: “George Osborne, architect of UK austerity, and the IMF, leading global enforcer of austerity, would be a dangerous combination.”
Johnson is expected to return to the subject of Osborne’s candidacy at this weekend’s G7 summit in Biarritz.
But the UK has little chance of influencing the decision. The IMF managing director is traditionally a European and the EU27 has already agreed to recommend Kristalina Georgieva, the Bulgarian chief executive of the World Bank.
The decision was made through several bitterly fought rounds of voting this month, after EU governments failed to reach a consensus about a candidate.
The IMF subsequently voted to lift a rule that puts an upper age limit of 65 on the managing director, to prevent the 66-year old Georgieva being barred from taking up the post.
