Has it ever been done before?
WE have to go back more than a century to find the nearest equivalent of George Osborne taking a job editing a major newspaper while sitting as an MP.
Back then it was Charles ‘CP’ Scott, a father figure of The Guardian – known as the Manchester Guardian at the time – who combined the two roles.
He trained as a journalist before joining the paper, which had been founded by his uncle, John Taylor. He became editor in 1872 aged 25 and was elected as Liberal MP for in Leigh, near Manchester, in 1895.
He only gave up his political career in 1906 when he bought The Guardian, where he remained editor until 1929.
In 1974, Bill Deedes – a former Cabinet minister remembered for his friendship with Margaret Thatcher’s husband Dennis, as fictionalised in Private Eye’s ‘Dear Bill’ letters – resigned as Tory MP for Ashford in Kent when he became editor of The Daily Telegraph. He stayed in post for 12 years.
Former Labour leader Michael Foot became editor, like Mr Osborne, of the London Evening Standard. Mr Foot ran the paper for three years, between 1942 and 1945 but stood down from his post after the war when he was elected as Labour MP for Plymouth Devenport.
Mr Foot did briefly return to editing while in Parliament but this was to run the overtly pro-Labour Trubune newspaper.