What makes George Osborne think he’s a centrist?

Don’t bother going after the Reform UK vote – the next Conservative leader should target voters lost to the Lib Dems instead. So says George Osborne, who told ITV ‘the Conservative party over a number of years vacated the central ground of British politics and allowed the Labour party to move from the Corbynista position it was in to the centre ground.’ The Tories, in other words, should do as he and David Cameron did before winning the 2010 election (or sort of winning it) and put before the electorate a set of reassuringly moderate policies.

Just the one problem: what makes Osborne think that he and Cameron occupied this mythical centre ground of British politics? What I remember of the 2010 general election campaign is that the Conservatives went in promising one tax cut – inheritance tax – while saying that taxes would have to rise for the rest of us.