I have never been happier, says George Osborne as he dates ex-aide behind his ‘metrosexual’ makeover
WHEN George Osborne slimmed down, adopted a stylish haircut and started wearing sharper suits, the nation quickly noticed.
Now the ex-Chancellor has announced that he is in a relationship with the woman credited with masterminding his makeover five years ago – his former chief of staff Thea Rogers.
Speaking in yesterday’s Times magazine, Mr Osborne – who announced last summer that he had separated from his 51-yearold wife Frances – admitted: ‘I probably have never been happier in my life. Which is a big plus after recent years.’
The father of two, who is now divorced, insisted it was ‘a recent relationship, within the past year’, but declined to say whether he is living with his new girlfriend.
Miss Rogers, now a senior communications executive with Deliveroo, was once labelled a ‘pitbull’ by Treasury officials for her aggressive style and fourletter tantrums.
Her manner even earned her comparisons with the fictional Malcolm Tucker in TV’s The Thick Of It.
The 38-year-old Oxford graduate was credited with convincing her boss to lose weight and adopt a close-cropped ‘Caesar’ haircut, and also organised a bewildering number of factory and construction site photocalls involving hard hats and hi-viz jackets.
Before joining Mr Osborne’s staff, Miss Rogers worked on Newsnight and for Nick Robinson at the BBC. She was involved in Labour’s 2005 re-election campaign and once dated Labour Minister James Purnell.
In a wide-ranging interview, for which he was photographed dressed casually in jeans and gleaming white New Balance trainers, Mr Osborne didn’t rule out a return to frontline politics.
‘I think second acts are hard in British politics but that doesn’t mean they never happen,’ he said.
He left government following the EU referendum in 2016 and Parliament the following year.
While insisting that he is still friends with most of the leading players in the Tory Cabinet, Mr Osborne urged Boris Johnson to announce a public inquiry into his Government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.
He also warned that the country is entering a ‘huge great recession’ as a result of mass economic inactivity since the ‘stay-at-home’ order was given in March. Suggesting that politicians should ‘treat the public like adults’, he added: ‘I’d be surprised if all the members of the Cabinet were still there in a year’s time’.
Mr Osborne, who celebrated his 49th birthday yesterday, said he thought the Government’s mantra of being ‘led by the science’ was a mistake: ‘Keep everyone indoors and the whole country will go broke.
‘No one will work, kids will go uneducated. You can have a Nobel prize in medicine and still not know the answer. And so, “Go where the science leads” is a misnomer, a red herring.
‘In the end, politics is just a word we use to describe how we make trade-offs, and how we try to balance interests.’