George Osborne Gets His Prizes

George gets what George wants

The Evening Standard was founded in 1827. Now it’s called the London Evening Standard (LOVE that American naming model), owned by Russian oligarch Evgeny Lebedev and thrust into the supine paws of beaten down tube frequenters like you and me. We flop it onto our laps and read the property ads and right-wing screeds festering in front of us, all in the name of giving Evgeny something to talk about at his next dinner with Ian McKellen.

It’s entirely natural that George Osborne should edit this piece of garbage. In fact, it’s sort of the logical next step for a country as mired in crony capitalism as ours and at least now we have a famous face we can attach to the Conservative propaganda spat out by the Standard day in day out.

Osborne has always had things handed to him on a plate. He’s never recognised that fact because that’s simply how most things are done here. He has never been a journalist, but why should that matter when he still has power and contacts, when he can pour gossip and intrigue into Evgeny’s ears at dinner and they can both luxuriate in the warm bath of the chosen ones.

For six years as chancellor, Osborne sold off the country to make a quick buck. He ruined the lives of people that don’t appear in the pages of papers like the Standard. Now, he’s grabbing the money for himself, wherever he can. His old advisor Rupert Harrison went to work for the asset manager BlackRock and then, sure enough, Osborne got a gig there too, one that pays £650,000 p/a for four days work a month.

He’s also the Kissinger fellow at the McCain Institute, named after John McCain. It turns out Henry Kissinger is a friend of Osborne’s, which makes a lot of sense. He’s a public speaker who’s made more than £500,000 giving speeches in America since Theresa May booted him out of the cabinet.

He’s still an MP, a job he doesn’t want to give up because he still, as the editor of the New Statesman Jason Cowley gushingly put it, “believes his destiny is Number 10”. Of course he believes his destiny is Number 10. He believes his destiny is everything: all the money and all the power for George, the good boy who deserves it all.

According to the journalist who (not surprisingly) broke the story, BBC Media editor Amol Rajan, who used to work for Evgeny Lebedev in various capacities (including as the editor of The Independent) and who had been the favourite to take the job before he moved to the BBC, Osborne will do his work at the Evening Standard in the morning and then “switch to being MP” (imagine the phone calls between Amol and Evgeny!).

From this description, it seems pretty clear that Osborne will be something like an honorary editor, a peacock for Evgeny to bring to important events but who does none of the work editors are supposed to do. That’s entirely in keeping with the oligarchy we live in. Osborne, a man who has never been a journalist, will get the money and prestige associated with being an editor. The staff under him will do the work.

And then, when he isn’t making millions of pounds for doing absolutely nothing other than making the world a worse place, he will write a book about why the world is a worse place. The Age of Unreason is a book George Osborne is writing. It’s a book that will explore the “background to the crisis in democracy and capitalism” and the rise of “populist nationalism embodied by Donald Trump’s presidential bid”.

Reading these lines leaves me feeling so much helpless rage that it’s hard to know what to do or what to write. Here is Osborne, a man who represents the smug, entitled, undeserving, unfeeling, uncaring, technocratic elite that has led to people turning to figures like Trump, pontificating on democracy and capitalism. Capitalism has ended up rewarding small cabals of people like Osborne. Democracy has been twisted and deformed by capitalism. Osborne is a key figure in this but he can’t see it, all he wants to do is shake his head at the vulgarity of someone like Trump while championing policies that are just as bad and occasionally rather similar.

George Osborne has committed crime after crime, error after error, and what does he get? More prizes. This is the world we live in.