George Osborne: still wreaking vengeance
They say the loony Left is given to violent invective, said the New Statesman. But there is nothing as vicious as a Tory scorned. It is over a year since George Osborne was sacked by Theresa May, yet the chancellor turned newspaper editor’s vendetta against her is showing no sign of easing. His paper, the London Evening Standard, continues to lay into the PM at every opportunity, and Osborne takes shameless delight in her misfortunes, said The Times. On election night, he is said to have texted “hahahahahahaha” to a friend, even as his former colleagues were losing their seats; he has crowed that May is a “dead woman walking”; and now, according to a profile in Esquire, he has told colleagues that he “won’t rest until she is chopped up in bags in my freezer”.
Osborne’s “monomaniacal obsession” with having May “defenestrated” is becoming “creepy”, said Iain Martin on Reaction.life. There’s a whiff of misogyny about the violence of his language, and if he carries on like this, he’ll start making people feel sorry for May, who, “for all her flaws, conducts herself with quiet dignity”. (In response to Osborne’s alleged remarks, her spokesman merely noted that the contents of the former chancellor’s freezer were not No. 10’s concern.)
It has been entertaining watching Tory feuds play out in public, said Gaby Hinsliff in The Guardian. But is it healthy for newspapers to be used as political weapons? Of course, they have always been partisan, but never before has an editor had so much “personal skin in the game. If journalism is the first draft of history, then the history of seven years of Tory rule, and its consequences for Britain, is being edited in front of our eyes by someone who was far too deeply involved” to be objective. Londoners might like to read in-depth investigations into how the capital’s property market has spiralled so far out of control; what will happen when essential workers can no longer afford to live there; and how a referendum that will have a profound effect on the City came to be held, and lost. As the ex-chancellor, Osborne must have unique insights into these questions: but the inside information he provides “tends to be the stuff that makes everyone else look bad”.