Revealed: George Osborne’s speech to Evening Standard staff – I know how to run a country, not a newspaper

Although George Osborne has many questions to answer regarding how he can take on the role of editor of the Evening Standard while remaining the MP for Tatton and a £650k per annum advisor to BlackRock, the former chancellor shied away from addressing any of the numerous conflicts of interest when he addressed staff in the Standard newsroom this afternoon.

Mr S’s mole reports that the MP for Tatton — whose last editorship was on Oxford University’s Isis Magazine — received a lukewarm reception from the paper’s staff as he gave a short speech to the shocked hacks. Osborne complained that he had been ‘keeping it secret for weeks’ and went on to say that he knew how to run a country but not how to run a newspaper (leading to some light mockery in the room over whether he had actually done the former).

Osborne said that as he did not know ‘the inner workings of journalism’ he would be relying on ‘the staff who have been making such a success of the paper’ to show him the ropes.