Reaching for a bucketload of slurry, he let rip
TOP political figures used to wait a few years until they exacted revenge on former Cabinet colleagues – usually when they published their memoirs. Everything happens faster these days. Less than a year since he was sacked as chancellor by Theresa May, George Osborne yesterday tore into (the remnants of) Mrs May, savaging, slashing, cackling, crowing. Quite the statesman and gentleman! Ex-MP Osborne, who nowadays edits the London Evening Standard, was appearing as a sofa guest on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show. He was there to discuss the political crisis following last week’s general election. Old Marr tossed him a loosener along the lines of ‘there’s blood in the water, isn’t there?’
When a minister, Mr Osborne could question-dodge and encode with the best of them. Yesterday he let rip.
‘Theresa May is a dead woman walking,’ he cried. ‘It’s just how long she’s going to remain on death row. We could easily get to the middle of next week and it all collapses for her.’
Pause for a nanosecond as he gulped down some oxygen and reached for another bucketload of slurry. ‘ Be in no doubt,’ he raged, ‘you’ve got the Leader of the Opposition coming on this programme as a sort of victor and you’ve got the Prime Minister, who’s supposed to have won the election, in hiding!’
Marr enquired: ‘Is there a small part of you enjoying this?’
Outrageous suggestion, Andrew. There was a HUGE part of George Osborne loving this!
Those of us who spend our lives in the Westminster shooting- range butts, watching the targets through our field glasses, relish the melodramas and vicissitudes of politics. Pratfalls, hubris, giddying bursts of popularity, comeuppances: These are our daily macaroni. But you expect a more collected approach from people who have held great offices of state.
One reason Paddy Ashdown, for instance, is such a thoroughly unimpressive figure – so glib and opportunistic – is that he never held ministerial office and was never matured in the barrel of government. But Mr Osborne was chancellor for six years. He served in Cabinet with Mrs May.
On the sofa beside him were Left-wing grandee Polly Toynbee and Right-wing commentator Toby Young. When La Toynbee rides to the defence of a Tory PM, you know things must be extreme.
She pointed out to Mr Osborne that his newspaper had been ‘pure poison against Theresa May day after day – and look at the result you’ve got. I know she sacked you, but why do you hate her so much? She and Philip Hammond are following your economic plan down to the last minute. They are Osbornites! So why do you hate them so much?’ Osborne, almost with a bull-terrier’s growl: ‘I don’t hate them.’ Toynbee, laughing: ‘You’re dripping personal bile!’
Toby Young quietly suggested that poor George had become ‘the Hon Member for Schadenfreude Central from the county of Embitteredshire’.
It certainly sounded like that when Mr Osborne also tore into Boris Johnson for plotting a Tory leadership bid, even though Foreign Secretary Boris was trying to stabilise the government and saying he was fully behind Mrs May.
Osborne was derisive about Boris-forPM stories on the front pages, saying ‘he’s in a permanent leadership campaign - I’m not sure it qualifies as news’. Ooh, Betty, you biiiitch!
COULd
this be the same George Osborne who was plotting longterm to take over from david Cameron until the Brexit vote last June pranged his plans? Clearly not.
With old-timer Michael Heseltine also appearing on the Marr show, it was hard not to think of those unimpressive squabbles 27 years ago when Heseltine toppled Mrs Thatcher and the country’s prosperity was placed second to the petty envies and resentments of senior Conservatives. Boris would do well to keep out of this aggro. He should also, publicly, establish an alliance with the Scots Tory leader Ruth davidson, his possible long-term rival.
The Left does not get much right but its principle of solidarity is a great deal sounder than Osbornian bile.