George Osborne has taken a break from his myriad jobs to give his thoughts on health policy. Orange juice should be taxed, and smoking banned, according to the ex-Chancellor. Doing so had been ‘too controversial’ while he was in government; those ‘anti-nanny state Conservatives’ who oppose it are ‘not worth listening to.
Leaving aside the lack of evidence about whether sugar taxes reduce calorie intake, and whether Conservative governments should impose such draconian measures, Osborne’s intervention is oddly timed. Negotiations with Greece on the Elgin Marbles’ future are ongoing; one would have thought the chairman of the British Museum has better things to be doing than opine on orange juice.
But this intervention shouldn’t surprise followers of the former MP for Tatton’s post-parliamentary career. Since he left the Commons, Osborne has not only shown an alacrity for picking up plum roles at think tanks, universities, and hedge funds, but a passion for producing inconvenient headlines for his ministerial successors.
Today’s Tories increasingly believe Osborne’s cuts were mistaken
Who can forget Osborne’s stint at the Evening Standard? Appointed with the total journalistic experience of editing a student paper, and a few gigs on the Telegraph diary in the 1990s, he used it to wage a one-man war against Theresa May’s government – supposedly with the goal of having her ‘chopped up in bags in (his) freezer’.
Once May was gone, Osborne soon lost interest in the tawdry task of being a newsman. Not because he wanted to properly devote himself to one of his other existing sinecures, but because other gigs were in the offing. But when he didn’t manage to become head of the IMF or the BBC’s chairman – second time lucky? – he settled for the British Museum. In his role there, Osborne has reportedly kept himself busy holding secret talks about returning the Elgin Marbles to Athens – from where they would almost certainly never come back.
Since the government has both a legal duty and a desire to keep the Marbles in Britain, he only succeeds in creating headaches for his fellow Tories. So why is Osborne doing this? Suggesting he is a latter-day convert to Greek nationalism doesn’t explain why he wades in on, say, a second Scottish independence referendum, or the evils of having a glass of Tropicana every morning.
After the Tories’ unexpected triumph in 2015, Osborne was nailed on as David Cameron’s successor. Pasty taxes were in the past. He had counter-balanced his inability to rival Boris Johnson’s charisma by reaching his tentacles across the Commons. The man nicknamed ‘the submarine’ for disappearing during elections was about to emerge into high-vis glory.
But then came Brexit. As a staunch Remainer, leaving the EU would always have thrown a spanner in Osborne’s smooth ascent to the premiership. Even then, as the architect of the absurd claim that leaving the EU would make each family £4,000 worse off or claims of a ‘punishment Budget’ in the event of a Leave vote, he associated himself with the very worst excesses of Project Fear.
Osborne’s relegation to the backbenches, and then his departure from the Commons altogether, came as little surprise. But the same vote that had scuppered Osborne’s chance of reaching the top of the greasy pole also brought him some unexpected new allies. The author of austerity was instantaneously transformed into a darling of Remainer luvvies.
Polly Toynbee mixed fulminating about Osborne’s ‘toxic’ economic legacy with praise for his Standard editorials, as he used every opportunity possible to lambast May and Brexit. He flirted with voting Lib Dem. He had swapped the Tories for heady delights of Europhilia.
And so it easy to understand why Osborne can feel comfortable in saying there are some Conservatives that are just ‘not worth listening to’, or that his party is destined to be wiped out. The problem for him, though, is that many of his former colleagues would say that he is one of them. His capacity for creating media mischief has come just as the old party is junking his legacy.
Brexit was the first chip in the wall. But Boris Johnson bulldozed right through it by admitting austerity was a mistake. Then Covid and China’s growing aggressiveness towards Taiwan put paid to Osborne’s passion for closer relations with Beijing. Even HS2 – his pet white elephant – risks being scaled back to pay for increases in NHS capacity that Osborne failed to cough up for.
Osborne’s Toryism – economically and socially liberal and pro-EU – is a world away from that of voters upon whom the party’s shifting electoral coalition relies. Those of his ideas that do endure, like Help to Buy, are widely acknowledged to have failed.
Today’s Tories increasingly believe Osborne’s cuts were mistaken, and lambast his failure to build homes, increase energy capacity, or cut immigration. Osborne may only be 51. But in political terms he is a relic from another age, fit to be exhibited in his own museum.
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