Give Osborne a place back in Government, says former aide
GEORGE OSBORNE should be given a place in the Government, a close ally and former political secretary of the former chancellor has told The Daily Telegraph.
The call came as Mr Osborne, editor of the London Evening Standard, issued an apology for allegedly claiming he would not rest until Theresa May was “chopped up in bags” in his freezer.
Rob Wilson writes in The Telegraph that a job should be found for Mr Osborne, “an astute operator”. The former chancellor was sacked by the Prime Minister and stood down as an MP to take up his new role as a journalist after David Cameron resigned.
Since then Mr Osborne has waged a war of words with No10, but his tone softened yesterday as he admitted “harsh words have been said about the Prime Minister” in an apparent mea culpa. Mr Wilson’s remarks are likely to spark speculation that Mr Osborne is open to returning to politics.
Mr Wilson, who lost his seat at the election, writes: “Mr Osborne is an astute operator, incredibly at one time he was in all but name party chairman, chief whip and chancellor … He is a huge and, at the moment, wasted talent for the Conservative Party. If Gordon Brown could bring back Peter Mandelson, surely it must be in the best interests of the Conservative Party to find a way to entice Mr Osborne back to the political fray.”
‘Surely it must be in the best interests of the party to find a way to entice Mr Osborne back to the political fray that he so loves’
It’s one hell of a scrap; no I don’t mean the two best boxers in the world, middleweights Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Álvarez, who fought out a controversial draw in Las Vegas at the weekend, but our own UK heavyweights Theresa May and George Osborne. They have had a rather long running, political and personal grapple that is probably also fated to end in a stalemate.
The latest punch-up came last week when it was reported that Mr Osborne wouldn’t rest until he had Mrs May chopped up in bags in his freezer. The whole thing happened months ago in a private conversation, when Mr Osborne gave what he believed to be one of his fairly standard witty and withering responses – this time to the news that No 10 believed he was a “psycho”. Of course, the swinging punches between the two corners can be traced back much further as both real and perceived insults were traded.
For Mr Osborne, he had thought he got on with Mrs May as Home Secretary, he rated her a strong colleague and voted for her in both ballots as leader. The real downhill turn in their relationship from Mr Osborne’s perspective came after she’d won the leadership, firing him without ceremony having served 11 years as chancellor and shadow chancellor, followed by the systematic way her two advisers (Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy) then briefed against him and tried to dismantle what he and David Cameron had achieved.
It’s quite hard to watch two people you like and respect taking lumps out of each other. Whilst I served as an MP, Mrs May was my constituency neighbour and I felt we got on well. I found her to be very hardworking, dedicated, decent and kind – her constituents by and large adore her in a way I have rarely seen. I also served Mr Osborne as his Parliamentary Private Secretary and got to see and hear him at close quarters and what I saw was pretty remarkable. This is a man with quite rare political instinct and ability, which is not to say he doesn’t make mistakes.
George trusted the people around him and never expected things to leak and they rarely, if ever, did. We would all be rather troubled and a little angry if our private conversations made it into the public domain. However, at a newspaper it’s not quite the same, and this one has been made public and has caused problems all around. That George and Theresa have history and aren’t bosom buddies is well-known. But is there any issue of substance between them at the moment? There is; Mr Osborne believes Mrs May is taking the wrong approach and is now hurtling towards a possibly big Tory defeat at the next election, thereby allowing for the first time ever Marxists or Corbynistas to run the Government. Part of this is down to what he believes is the mess the Government is making of Brexit and the failure to stick to a long-term economic plan that was working.
No 10 sees itself as under attack on an almost daily basis from the Evening Standard. Mr Osborne argues that he is a newspaper editor and his job is to call it as he sees it. For No 10 it feels personal.
Mr Osborne is an astute operator, incredibly at one time he was in all but name party chairman, chief whip and chancellor. During his years at the top there was no better political operator. He took the country back from an economic precipice and will be remembered as a great chancellor who took very difficult decisions. He is a huge and, at the moment, wasted talent for the Conservative Party.
If Gordon Brown could bring back Peter Mandelson, surely it must be in the best interests of the Conservative Party to find a way to entice Mr Osborne back to the political fray that he so loves. Some will say he waltzed off to run a newspaper and earn big money, but the truth is he might have stayed for a big role.
The big beasts of the Conservative Party can continue to punch each other to standstill, but isn’t the sensible thing to do to find a mutually acceptable settlement? At 46, Mr Osborne is too talented to be ignored and whoever is leader should be trying to find a way to get him to square up to Labour and land his heaviest punches.
Rob Wilson was Tory MP for Reading East until May 2017 and a former parliamentary private secretary to George Osborne