I feel sorry for the people of Tatton – I hear their MP is just too busy to care
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Version 0 of 1. I actually don’t know where to begin writing about George Osborne becoming the editor of the London Evening Standard. So bizarre is the latest from the once likely heir to No 10 that people will, for years to come, speak of where they were when they heard the news. It happened on Friday so, naturally, like all good MPs, I was sitting in my constituency office, working. The annoying BBC “news just in” jingle rang out on a number of devices. My colleague, John, peered over his computer screen and relayed the news: “George Osborne is the new editor of the Evening Standard.” We locked eyes as I attempted to make sense of the information. I couldn’t. Several seconds passed. I managed to splutter: “What?” “You heard,” he replied, dead-eyed. Still more seconds passed as my brain ran through the databank of possible responses, finally landing, after what seemed like a lifetime, on “WTF”. I think this news might be my kryptonite. There is so much wrong with it I don’t know where to start. I don’t credit Osborne with having great judgment but why he thought this was a good idea is worse than bad judgment. Maybe it’s a guilty pleasure, like a Jean-Claude Van Damme film about kickboxing in an underground car park – so bad it is actually good. I’ve yet to find the ironic gag. The column I wrote last week about how the ex-chancellor was treating being an MP as a hobby after the announcement of his one-day-a-week £650,000 job working for BlackRock Investments is not even in the recycling yet (thanks to years of austerity cutting the collections). Yet, just days later, he’s acquired another job he is apparently going to do on the other four days a week. Next week you can look forward to my column announcing that Osborne has a Saturday job presenting Match of the Day and a Sunday job in the clergy. He is as qualified for those jobs as he is to be the editor of the Evening Standard. The conflicts of interest are so numerous that my brain has no time to think of them before another pops up. I shall try to devise a list as an aide-memoire for the similarly baffled. It is not OK for politicians to be the editors of newspapers. Not in the UK at least. It’s all the rage in Russia, which is perhaps why the Standard’s proprietor, Evgeny Lebedev, thought nothing of it. No one who read the Evening Standard’s coverage of the London mayoral race would be surprised that it is of the Tory persuasion. It showed then that it was a fan of a rich boy with no talent by supporting Zac “God loves a trier” Goldsmith. People might think it’s no biggy, it’s not the BBC, it doesn’t have to be neutral. No, it doesn’t, but it does have to at least make some commitment to reporting facts and holding to account those in positions of power. How can George Osborne ever be trusted to do this? At the moment, when the press is getting a global drubbing from people shrieking “fake news”, how will we be able to trust anything the Standard says? For all those hard-working news reporters and political journalists fighting to be trusted and maintain an important part of our democracy, this is a smack in the face. As pravda means truth in Russian, anything political written in the Standard must now be judged as equally “true”. In taking this job, Osborne has proved he is neither right nor honourable Osborne is not just a politician – he was in the cabinet of the most recently elected government. He and his colleagues called on parliament to authorise air strikes in Syria. This is serious stuff. We don’t need lonely Julian Assange to hack our emails now; Osborne can just dish the dirt on all sorts of government goings-on when he finds he can’t fill the space. No newshoundery needed; he can just print the minutes of meetings he had filed in his special inbox folder marked “memoir worthy”. As he is the Rt Hon George Osborne, I assume the Standard can expect scoops from the privy council meeting with the Queen. Perhaps a diary about what her maj was wearing. Journalists would give their eye teeth for such access. In taking this job, Osborne has proved he is neither right nor honourable. On to conflict three and Osborne’s very own baby, the “northern powerhouse”. In announcing his position, Osborne’s new boss described him as “London through and through”. This may have come as a surprise to his constituents in Cheshire and anyone who thought he gave a toss about anything past the Watford Gap. Frankly, if you believed this you only have yourself to blame for this latest disappointment. Like everything he will write in the paper (before someone who can actually write rewrites it), it will be as sincere as his commitment to the north of England. People hate politicians enough without him actually standing on a stool and shouting: “I literally couldn’t be any less sincere.” My initial shock at hearing the news was swept aside as suddenly as it arrived. A man walked in to my constituency office moments later. He was suffering from early onset dementia and severe mental health problems and was inappropriately housed. He told me how he couldn’t move from the hostel he was in because he couldn’t get on the housing list and his money had been cut. I held him in my arms as he wept. I told him he did matter. As soon as he was gone, I helped Jean, a pensioner, and together we explored the new housing allocation system, which is all online. Needless to say, Jean doesn’t have a computer. Without the time spent listening to and learning from my constituents, I would be a useless MP. It is more than a full-time job. These people had too much going on to care about Osborne’s new jobs; it was his old one that had left them needing help from their local MP. It’s a good job they don’t live in Tatton. I hear the MP there is too busy to care. Jess Phillips is Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley |