No talent? No issue if you’re as conceited as George
REMEMBER when hiring Noel Fielding as a host for Channel 4’s version of Great British Bake Off felt like an astonishing choice? Doesn’t that seem a long time ago, now that the London Evening Standard has appointed George Osborne as its 32nd editor?
To be fair, all George has wanted to be is a newspaper editor… I mean Chancellor of the Exchequer… I mean a meaningful MP for Tatton… I mean a £650k consultant for BlackRock. No. Sorry. I should also add a Kissinger fellow at the McCain Institute, Arizona, a costly public speaker and chairman of Northern Powerhouse.
It cannot be denied that Mr Osborne is living his best life. Maybe he’ll be a fireman next. Or a taster at a sweet factory. Or an astronaut. He’s like a modern-day Mr Benn: not Tony, but the children’s character who visits a fancy dress shop to try on off-thepeg alternative lives.
Besides the obvious ethical conflict of the former Chancellor drawing both a private salary as gamekeeper of the fourth estate plus a public salary as poacher of a political party, there’s the small requirement that a serious journalist position needs a background in serious journalism.
George’s experience is quite the opposite: early on, he failed to get on The Times graduate trainee scheme. Now he believes a daily newspaper can be edited in his spare time.
You might ask what planet George lives on. Maybe it is one of those planets in Star Trek, where everything looks weirdly different, and yet the locals are bipeds who breathe oxygen and speak English. If so, then it’s a planet that also imbues its inhabitants with supreme self-confidence in their own abilities. Noel Fielding is another native; quite certain that a cake-baking show could do with his skillset of not being funny enough to stop them axing Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
Elsewhere on Planet Deluded, George Galloway believes oratorical windbaggery equips him to write children’s books, in much the same way that being a singer with The Smiths enabled Morrissey to write his award-winning novel List of the Lost. The award being The Bad Sex Award. Vive la meritocracy!
Truly we are in an age where an attitude of ‘Yeah, I could do that’ can be reason enough to propel the over-confident towards overpromotion.
WE are in an age where Boris Johnson filibusters into the post of Foreign Secretary, where Derek Mackay takes charge of Scotland’s finances despite an accounting acumen that suggests acute number blindness unless allowed to use fingers and toes. And where Donald Trump rules as king of self-belief: a man who willed himself into becoming President of the US, despite looking like the villain in a movie where the hero is a dog.
Our pragmatism is being sorely tested, especially among women, who often hold back from applying for positions because they feel they won’t meet all the specifications. Maybe, in future, we can let George Osborne inspire us.