Fury as Osborne says he wants Mrs May ‘chopped up and put in a freezer’
GEORGE Osborne faced revulsion from former Tory colleagues yesterday after reportedly claiming he wanted to see Theresa May “chopped up in bags in my freezer”.
The ex-Chancellor is alleged to have made the gruesome remark “to more than one person” at the London Evening Standard, the newspaper where he is now editor.
His bloodthirsty language, reported in a profile article in Esquire magazine, follows a series of scathing attacks on Mrs May and her Government by his paper. Earlier this year, he referred to the PM as “a dead woman walking”.
Tory MPs were left appalled, with senior backbencher Andrew Bridgen said: “In saying something like this, George Osborne has let both himself down and those in the Conservative Party who used to think highly of him. It is deeply disappointing.”
Disastrous
Nadine Dorries, another Tory MP who has previously denounced Mr Osborne as a “posh boy”, said the reported comment was an “insight into the way his mind works – and always has”.
Mr Osborne was sacked from the Cabinet by Mrs May soon after she took over at No10 from David Cameron in the summer of 2016.
As Chancellor he had been an outspoken critic of Brexit, with the Treasury under his stewardship publishing a string of documents detailing supposedly disastrous economic consequences from a vote to leave the EU.
Leave campaigners branded the scaremongering warnings “Project Fear” and have noted that they failed to come to pass once the country actually did vote to quit.
The Esquire article highlighted how under Mr Osborne’s editorship the London Evening Standard had regularly savaged the Prime Minister and her Brexit plans in print.
On his first day as editor, the newspaper ran the front page headline: “Brussels twists knife on Brexit... EU chief mocks PM May with her own ‘Strong and Stable’ leadership slogan.”
The paper’s opinion column has run scathing pieces about Mrs May’s government virtually daily.
In yesterday’s Esquire profile, journalist Ed Caesar wrote: “Osborne’s ani-
mus against May is complicated in origin — personal, political, ideological, tactical — but purely felt.
“When I met him at the Standard this past spring, he was polite enough about the Prime Minister. But according to one staffer at the newspaper, Osborne has told more than one person that he will not rest until she ‘is chopped up in bags in my freezer’.”
Mr Osborne told the Esquire journalist he did not care about how people viewed his newspaper or what they thought about him.
The magazine quoted him as saying: “One of the things I always felt as Chancellor is you’ve got to make decisions and be prepared to make calls.
“And it’s so easy in life and in politics and in journalism to pull your punches and put off the difficult decision.
“I was perfectly used as Chancellor to being controversial and to people having strong views about me, positive and negative, but I thought at the time: I’m in this job, and I’m paid to make decisions, and I’m going to make the best judgment calls I can.
Dismissive
“I take the same approach to journalism. I’m paid to produce a paper that has attitude and gives voice to people whose voices are not being heard, and I don’t really give a damn if some are offended by that.”
Downing Street was dismissive of his alleged remark concerning Mrs May.
The PM’s spokesman said: “The contents of the former Chancellor’s freezer are probably not a matter for me.”
Politicians and journalists alike were astonished when Mr Osborne was appointed to the editor’s job soon after his sacking from the Government.
His previous journalism experience included editing two issues of an Oxford University student journal and a brief stint as a freelance gossip writer.
Meanwhile Mrs May’s ex-aide Nick Timothy had a dig at Mr Osborne over other comments suggesting he worried people thought he was “an ******** ”.