Tory MP turns on 'tacky and immature' Chancellor

George Osborne is too "tacky and immature" to continue to be Chancellor of the Exchequer, one of his own backbench MPs said yesterday.

Nadine Dorries, one of the most outspoken and unpredictable MPs on the Tory side, was reacting to an extraordinary speech by the Chancellor earlier in the week in which he made a joke about masturbation.

On her blog yesterday, Ms Dorries complained: "Is it just me, or does anyone else expect our Chancellor to act in this manner?"

She went on to name five of her fellow Tories any one of whom she believed would be as capable of being Chancellor as Mr Osborne. She added: "They may also bring some much needed class and statesmanship to the role. I just hope no one else was watching and the shame of having such an immature and tacky Chancellor is all ours."

Speaking this week at the GQ awards, where he picked up the Politician of the Year award, Mr Osborne, who at 40 is the youngest Chancellor for more than a decade, remarked: "I'm not sure who actually reads the politics pages of GQ magazine.

"I suspect they are the only pages that a teenage boy hasn't stuck together in reading the magazine. Some might say that's because the wankers are on the page rather than reading them."

Mr Osborne was among dozens of MPs who laughed loudly after David Cameron called Ms Dorries "frustrated" during Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday.

The unintended rebuke came just minutes before she proposed an amendment to the Government's Health and Social Care Bill which would alter current arrangements for abortion counselling.