Full text: George Osborne’s speech at the Spectator Parliamentarian awards

I am honoured to be invited to present these awards. Thank you very much for taking me out of my unemployment. When I read the Spectator front cover on the eve of the referendum, I thought it was advice on how to vote: ‘Out – and into the world’. But it turned out to be career advice to me. And of course, normally these annual awards are presented by last year’s winner of ‘Politician of the year’, David Cameron. And it’s another example of where he’s disappeared and left me holding the baby. I wanted to support the Spectator magazine – a brilliant weekly compendium on the arts, on politics, on society. Yours for only £4.25 – or $4 because of the policies of the Spectator.

Fraser, you are a forceful editor, doughty defender of press freedom. Andrew, you are an expert chair, a formidable journalist in your own right. Indeed, I always made it a rule in the six years that I was Chancellor of the Exchequer, never to be interviewed by Andrew Neil because he was too good.