George’s sharp U-turn over Carillion crisis

Goodness me, how George osborne has changed his tune! As Chancellor of the exchequer, he was an ardent advocate of the Private Finance Initiative whereby government projects are contracted out to private firms such as Carillion, which collapsed last week with the potential loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

In october 2014, he made Treasury money available to Carillion to help boost its overseas business, saying: ‘It’s great to see successful companies like Carillion winning contracts around the world.’

Today, as editor of the evening standard after being sacked from the Cabinet by Theresa May, osborne takes a different view. ‘Why has the state found itself so dependent on a few very large outsourcing firms?’ his newspaper thundered. ‘ The failure to use a variety of smaller mid-sized companies undermines innovation and leaves services hostage when things go wrong.’

Yet while others may have suffered from Carillion’s collapse, osborne might not have done badly out of it. Last week, the Financial news revealed investment house BlackRock — which pays him £650,000 for one day’s work a week — profited to the tune of millions by gambling on Carillion’s share price going down.