Too young, too inexperienced, too prone to political point-scoring, too careless in his choice of rich holiday friends. Barely a year after Conservative MPs heaped superlatives on George Osborne for his election-saving inheritance tax plan, the shadow chancellor is again dominating Tory chatter in Westminster’s restaurants and bars.

But the conversations are the mirror image of last year’s paeans. The Tory backlash has spread from the Thatcherite rump, always uneasy at his eschewal of unfunded tax cuts, to usually loyal moderates.