George Osborne was leaning over the shoulder of a young woman with the soon-to-be-published front page of the Evening Standard open on her computer when he greeted me in the Standard newsroom for our interview. This may have been for show, demonstrating that the career politician and former chancellor of the exchequer was now a newspaper man – editor of a big city daily. Or it may be that he had in fact taken to his new role as a headline and page-make-up master. Indeed, he’s largely had good reviews for his time at the paper.

In one sense, newspaper editor is an appropriate job for an out-of-work politician; politicians live the news cycle as intensely as editors. On the other hand, few – I can’t think of any – have actually taken up journalism. This is perhaps because politicians see themselves as doers rather than observers, the subject of the news rather than recorders of it. Still, media and politics have got increasingly mixed up. Newspaper editors can have as much influence as politicians, so why not?

Except that it’s 2018 and the job of a newspaper editor is quite a tenuous one, hanging by a thread as much as the job of moderate politician – indeed, the Standard reported a £10 million loss for last year.

Osborne, at 47, is in the awkward position of having lost his chosen career in his prime years. He had risen high enough in the political ranks to have little stomach for taking a steep demotion and working himself up the ladder again. But he was at least one election short of being able yet to become a bestselling memoirist and world-leader grandee, the path his political partner, David Cameron, the former prime minister, is embarking on.

At the same time, Osborne seems to have had too much pride to simply fall back on collecting the large sums available to former high-ranking politicians from the banking industry (though he has picked up a few part-time and well-paid advisory sinecures).

Considering that, the editorship of a major daily – even one that is now distributed free of charge – may be a clever move. For one thing, it keeps him in politics – the Standard is a voice for a be-careful-what-you-wish-for Brexit, the issue on which Osborne and Cameron lost their jobs. But it also lets him avoid having to establish himself in an institutionally political role, just at a time when almost all formal political roles and institutions seem headed for a cruel comeuppance. The Conservative Party is probably not a good bet these days for anybody.

It surely seems sensible to want to sit out the coming political apocalypse. And yet it isn’t an outlandish proposition to think that when all is said and done someone will have to pick up the pieces...

I don’t believe this country wants a choice between Jeremy Corbyn or Jacob Rees-Mogg

Michael Wolff: How’s the newspaper business?

George Osborne: I’m loving it.

What’s got more longevity, the life of a newspaper editor or the life of a centrist politician?

[Nervous laughter.] Well, I managed 20 years of a life of a centrist politician. I think I’ll be lucky if I last 20 years as an editor.

Many editors have lasted 20 years – until now. There are interesting parallels between these two difficult, some might say moribund, professions. Newspapers are, to say the very least, in transition, but politics also seems in transition. You tell me, but it seems more and more difficult to be a centrist politician.

Newspapers and politics are undergoing big changes. But I don’t think that’s going to mean they are less relevant or less needed. There will always be a need for good information and informed opinion. As for centrist politicians here and across the West, yeah, they’ve had setbacks – we’ve had setbacks – but I don’t think they are not relevant any more or needed any more in Western politics. Absolutely not. We need even more balanced and mainstream political opinion.

It’s not clear that voters think that.

I don’t believe that this country, to take just Britain, wants to be presented with a choice between Jeremy Corbyn or Jacob Rees-Mogg. I do not believe that the country I’ve grown up in has just decided that it doesn’t want any more to have centrist, moderate leadership that is attempting to balance the competing priorities of a modern economy. In any case, politics – as in journalism – isn’t just about always giving people what they appear to want. It is also about leading opinion and shaping the public debate. So just because the centrist politicians have had a bad time of it, it’s not a reason to get off the stage. It’s a reason to fight for your ground. I’m choosing to fight for my ground at this paper.

If you could choose between being the editor of, say, the Times, hell, the New York Times, and high government position, what would you choose?

I actually really love editing the Evening Standard. I grew up [in London]. This newspaper is part of the furniture of this city. Its values are very similar to my values, pro business, socially liberal, internationalist. So I’m not looking for another newspaper job. As for the politics, I could have chosen to hang around in the House Of Commons and I chose not to. I’m not desperately keen to go back and do some cabinet job. I don’t actually want to be applying my political talents, whatever they are, to leading the country out of the European Union, which is what you would have to be doing if you were in the Conservative cabinet.

Or leading from inside to stay in the Union.

Well, regrettably and sadly, the country chose to leave the EU. My view is we have to leave the EU and there are no prospects for stopping that. But this was not a vote to leave the EU and all of its connective alliances and organisations, I believe, but actually a vote for a kind of hybrid relationship with the EU, where we leave the EU but we stay in the single market, we stay in the customs union, all those sort of things. And that is the position this paper argues from: that the Brexit vote was not a vote for a complete divorce.

Osborne delivers his eighth and final budget, 16 March 2016 © Shutterstock

Your generation of political figures – David Cameron, the Milibands, Ed Vaizey, Boris Johnson – once and future or merely once, all in the past?

Well, um... that’s quite an interesting mix of people. Let me speak for my political friends. We ran a government for six years that I think we can be very proud of... others will judge. And yet there’s a moment... these jobs don’t go on forever and I was lucky to do the job for six years. I’m not yearning to go back. I’m not nostalgic about it, not regretful about it. I feel nothing other than genuinely lucky to have done it.

No sense of unfinished business?

Not particularly. I did a lot. I did eight budgets as chancellor. Of course I didn’t want to leave government and I didn’t want to leave office. But I don’t feel there were lots of things as chancellor that I should have done but didn’t do. I was unbelievably fortunate in my relationship with my prime minister, David Cameron. We were and are still close friends. The atmosphere in Downing Street was pleasant. We worked together as a team. Do I want to be in some kind of vipers’ nest with everyone trying to kill each other? I don’t need that.

Are you guys still in close touch?

David and me? Yeah. Very much so.

Have you read his book?

That’s a trade secret. Put it this way, I’m confident it’s going to be very good.

How do you come off in it?

I think it’s going to be a good read.

It’s finished now? It’s in?

You have to ask him.

At the launch of a Conservative manifesto, 14 April 2015 © Getty Images

When you think about Brexit do you see it as a function of your or the Cameron administration’s political miscalculations or do you see it as some kind of historical tide?

I was a very senior member of a government that held a referendum and lost it, so I certainly share the responsibility for that. And although it’s widely known, though I kept it secret at the time, that I was against having a referendum, I was part of the collective agreement to proceed with one. And I did everything I could to win that referendum. I think, however, if you are a historian looking back at this period from 50 years’ time, you would say Britain’s relationship with the European Union was troubled, with talk of referendums for decades, that Tony Blair and John Major and others had promised referendums on different aspects of EU membership – when I was in my twenties there was even a party called the Referendum Party – and also that we happen to be living through a period that encompasses the aftermath of a financial crash, which always produces a political reaction, and, as well, a big shift in technology making it easier for insurgent and rebel groups to get their message across. You put all that together and in some ways the Brexit referendum looks, if not inevitable, at least very understandable. I’m not a believer in historical determinism, but you can quite easily see the big trends rather than just micro decisions in the cabinet that led to the Brexit referendum.

In the dead of night, what do you think personally you should have done differently?

I think we...

Not the administration. You.

I don’t think... I mean we didn’t run a very good campaign because we lost. I don’t actually know what would have made the difference. People assume there was more we could have done, but I actually don’t think...

With other senior Conservatives Sajid Javid, Nicky Morgan and Theresa May during the general election, 5 January 2015 © Shutterstock

Do you think you personally should have been louder about not having a referendum, thrown yourself in front of the door when they were making that decision?

No. I don’t think that would have made any difference. That wasn’t the way I operated with David Cameron and that team. Could I have done anything different in the campaign? Well, I tried very hard and was accused of being too loud and too aggressive in that campaign. I think what we discovered in the campaign was that, for many decades, politicians had not been making the case for the advantages of being in the EU. When it actually came to having to pivot out from a negotiation for a better deal with the EU into a campaign to argue why we should stay in the EU, we found the British people were not particularly convinced of the merits of being part of the broader European family. I think there are things we could have done on immigration. We were always about the problems of immigration and less about the benefits of immigration. The money we sent to the EU, we could have made the case for what we got in return. I think there are a lot of things you could see that might have made a difference. But these are things that should have happened in British politics over many years.

So it’s not that you guys messed up in selling it. Rather nobody really wanted it?

I don’t think there was a more perfect campaign that would have won the day. I was sceptical about having a referendum because I thought we might lose it. I never felt like we were winning the argument. I was meeting many people I knew and respected who were going to vote the other way. I said to my wife a week before the result – we were living in Downing Street at the time with our children – we might well be out of a house.

George Osborne introduces the shadow cabinet at the Conservative Party conference, 5 October 2009 © Getty Images

That was almost two years ago now. Trace me the arc of how you felt in that abrupt change of personal and political circumstances.

I think, like anyone who suddenly stops doing what they’ve been doing, it’s a shock. I also had not really appreciated how all-consuming the job of chancellor of the exchequer was. I was working 18 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year – then suddenly I’m not. I don’t think I’ll ever work as hard as that again. There’s a shock of overnight being out of this thing that had become my life. But a political career is a hazardous thing. I had known intellectually that the job could come to an end. But the more difficult thing was to think what do I do next. All of my adult life I had a straightforward plan: be in politics, rise up in politics. Then suddenly I had to make a decision about whether I was going to stay or try something new.

Can you see yourself never going back into politics?

Ever going back?

Never going back.

Yeah. There’s a part of me that thinks it’s a mistake to go back in life and it’s a mistake to build a life around what you used to do. It’s a bit like someone who is successful at sports spending the rest of their life talking about running the 100 metres in the Olympics. In politics, you could easily do that as an ex-finance minister. One of the reasons I came to edit a newspaper is I felt I should do something new, a different trade.

Among the many reasons you go into politics is that you think you can do it better than whoever is doing it. So, again, dead of night...

I’m actually quite a good sleeper.

So in the light of morning, Theresa May, one word.

If the Conservative Party does not try to reconnect with modern Britain, it’s screwed

Um... I think people know what I think of the leadership of this government.

Well, tell them again.

You know, you can read about it in the editorial columns of the Evening Standard. I do think this: if the Conservative Party does not try to reconnect with modern Britain, with urban, ethnically diverse, sexually diverse Britain, it is politically screwed. The current leadership needs to find a way to reconnect or we will need new leadership.

Where is a hard Brexit a year from now?

I think the Brexiteers are essentially being found out. They promised this nirvana, this taking back control, so suddenly we’d be in charge of our money, our borders, our immigration policy and all that. But the actual result is that they can’t make a decision because the real cost of leaving the EU and the single market is so high they don’t dare do it. So they keep putting off the decision. While we legally leave in March of next year, we’re not actually leaving any of the arrangements. The irony is that the only thing we will leave next year is the room where the decisions are taken. We at least used to be in the room arguing from Britain’s corner.

So a hard Brexit is in tatters a year from now?

We are in a kind of permanent transition. We are unable as a country, rightly if you like, to stomach the cost of leaving. So we put off the practicality for years and years to come. This view that we just need to get Brexit over and done with so we can talk about other things is totally unrealistic. Questions about who we let into the country, how we trade with our neighbours, how we look after our environment on this continent are going to be with us for many years to come.

Is May prime minister a year from now?

I don’t know.

George Osborne and David Cameron plan the 2010 general election campaign, 10 September 2009 © i-Images

Handicap it.

I’m not going to do that.

If she is not prime minister a year from now, who is?

I genuinely don’t know the answer to that. There’s not a clear frontrunner.

How angry would you be if Boris Johnson became prime minister versus how angry you’d be if Rees-Mogg or Michael Gove became prime minister?

Well, Michael is a friend of mine.

So you would be less angry?

All I’m saying is that Michael is a good friend of mine. None of my Remain friends can understand why I’m still friends with him, but I am. We go and watch German opera together.

So if you had to support someone.

The paper will...

I mean on a personal basis.

I’ve seen the job very close up obviously and it needs to be someone who is able to run a balanced, moderate programme and connect to modern Britain.

How incredulous would you be if Jeremy Corbyn became prime minister?

Well, I think you have to take seriously the possibility of a Jeremy Corbyn prime ministership. I think he would be a disaster for the country. But in many ways Brexit opened the doors for Jeremy Corbyn. The elites have failed you, the establishment has failed you, we need to completely tear up all the country’s political and economic arrangements and start again. And then Jeremy Corbyn comes along and says the elites have failed you, the establishment has failed you and we need to completely tear up the economic and political arrangements of the country. Be careful what you wish for.

Visiting he Evening Standard offices following his appointment as editor, 17 March 2017 © i-Images

What are the kind of circumstances or exigencies that might force you to pivot back into politics?

I care about the decisions that affect my country and want to influence them. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I thought you had to be a member of parliament to do that, you had to be in the cabinet to do that. Now I understand that there are many ways to shape the country’s future without necessarily sitting on those green benches that I sat on for all those years.

Sometime after midnight here on 9 November 2016 – I guess it must have been about 1.30am – at the moment it suddenly became clear that Donald Trump might well be president, what were you thinking?

Well, I was sitting on a sofa with [former Cameron advisor] Steve Hilton in Palo Alto [California].

So it was about 5.30pm. And Steve was cheerful and you were...

Well, I was sitting with Steve and Rachel, his wife [Rachel Whetstone, former Conservative Party official and more recently top communications official at Google, Uber and Facebook]. Rachel was my first boss. They are good friends. And I’m a visiting professor at Stanford. Well, I don’t think it was a great decision for the world or for the United States.

Shock factor?

Um, I don’t think... I’m not going to claim that I saw it coming. I assumed Hillary Clinton would win. But I guess at the time I wasn’t particularly surprised. Her campaign hadn’t been very good. Trump had caught the moment.

Well, in fact, nobody really thought he had caught the moment until it ended up in his hand.

But, again, when you saw it happen you understood. The Republican Party should never have allowed the nomination to be captured by him. The Democrats should not have allowed Hillary Clinton to run yet again. They had no change message after eight years of a Democratic administration. And Trump understood how to run a presidential campaign from a mobile phone.

What’s your gut? Do you think he’ll still be president a year from now?

My gut is that he’s re-elected actually.

I think it would be a big mistake to write off Rupert Murdoch. I have always rather admired him

An inside-the-government question for you. In my book Fire And Fury, I recounted what was told to me about Tony Blair arriving in Washington in February 2017 and telling the president that, at the behest of the Americans, British intelligence might have been spying on the Trump campaign. Blair denied ever saying that. Now, the Trump people are pointing to someone with British intelligence connections in Cambridge as doing exactly what in fact Tony Blair told them in 2017. Got any info on this for me?

I think not.

You know any British spies I can call?

I know some British spies. But I’m not sure you can call them. It seems to me unlikely, very unlikely, that British intelligence would spy on Americans. They don’t do that. Are there lots of people who used to be in intelligence agencies who go and work for political consultancies and investigating firms? Yes, there are. Do presidential campaigns and others hire those operations? Yes, they do. Which is why the British character Christopher Steele emerges in the story. So it’s perfectly possible there were people who wanted to know more about the Trump campaign. But personally, I think it would be very unlikely or I would be very surprised if it were the British government or the American government.

But you don’t buy the fundamental premise here that the Brits do for the Americans what the Americans can’t do and the Americans do for the Brits what the Brits can’t do?

They certainly cooperate very closely. But my understanding is that there is absolutely a red line about spying on Americans.

Murdoch.

Hum.

Is he over, do you think?

I think it would be a big mistake to write off Rupert Murdoch, to put it mildly. I have always rather admired Rupert Murdoch, even if I don’t agree with him on a few things, the way he built a media empire on three continents, the way he was ahead of his game on newspapers. That play that was here in the West End, Ink, by James Graham, kind of captured what he did for the British newspaper industry.

He’s 87. He’s now on the verge of selling the overwhelming majority of his company.

I’ve actually got to know him pretty well over the past 15 years. He is a newspaper man. He is really interested in the nuts and bolts of newspapers. In all of the conversations I’ve had with him he’s never really been interested in the new Fox. He is not selling his news business.

Preparing the 2011 budget speech in No11 with then chief of staff Rupert Harrison, 23 March 2011 © i-Images

He’s selling Sky News.

Well, remember he has no political influence over Sky News. But to come back to my point, first of all he’s a newspaper man and second, he is not at all sentimental. He has made a decision that even Fox is not big enough in the age of Netflix.

And you don’t feel, as I do, and as many do, that the decision he’s made is actually that his children can’t run this business and that’s why he’s getting out?

Well, I know his children, the three who are in the business, very well and they are all very talented people.

There’s a difference between talent and running an empire – also difficult when they don’t really get along with each other.

My experience with them is that they are clever, interesting people.

What does happen when eventually there is no Rupert Murdoch? What happens to the Sun and the Times without Rupert?

The answer for the paid quality broadsheets, as we used to call them, is more straightforward. People will pay for content. For those big mass-market papers it is much more challenging.

How much does the British newspapers business, the British media business, change on that day when there is no Rupert Murdoch?

As I said, I’m not so sure it’s going to happen any time soon. But he’s been a giant of British journalism. So, you know, we will mourn his passing.

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