Being a member of parliament is a full-time job – as I know from my personal experience, as George Osborne’s predecessor. Being a newspaper editor is also a full-time job. Giving external advice and speeches, however well remunerated, also takes time. Doing all three together, it seems to me, would require the talents of Superman.

I had the honour of being MP for Tatton from 1997 to 2001. I still miss it – not the House of Commons, but the constituency. And I confess to having done a little journalistic moonlighting myself. I wrote one column a month for the Knutsford Guardian and another for the Manchester Evening News. They were an easy way of keeping in touch with those who voted for me (and those who did not) and took no more than an hour each to write.

I fail to see how he can do one job without short-changing his readers or constituents in another

Being the editor of a major newspaper, however, is something else. Leaving aside the issue of a conflict of interests that the London Evening Standard will now be edited by a Conservative MP, it will be still be up to Osborne to explain how he can manage it all.

It is not a question of impropriety. His work as newspaper editor, as well as his fees for speaking and consulting, will be fully declared in the register of members’ interests. It is, however, a matter of capacity and of hours in the day: between a vital editorial meeting at the Standard or a no-less-vital vote in the House, which will have priority?

When my parliamentary career ended I was gently reproached by some of my constituents for having promised to serve them for one term and one term only. But politicians keep their promises – don’t they? I regretted making the promise but didn’t regret keeping it.

And when my term was over, one of the Tatton voters threatened to haunt me forever for letting George Osborne into parliament. But of course he would have got in anyway. He was just 27 at the time, and Tatton was only the second constituency he tried for. He was, and is, a natural politician. Having once helped prepare William Hague for prime minister’s questions, he probably knew more about the House of Commons when he entered it than I did when I left.

From my spies in Tatton (the Tories at least) I know that he is well regarded and was a diligent constituency MP even while chancellor of the exchequer. In every election since 2001 he has been elected – as my predecessor, Neil Hamilton ,was – with a comfortable, five-figure majority. He would have been the constituency’s MP for life, but for the boundary changes that threaten to abolish it. So he may become politically homeless anyway.

But to be both an MP and an editor – of a newspaper that is unread in his constituency – is to enter entirely new ground. I fail to see how he can do one job without short-changing his readers or constituents in another.

I am also a democrat, and believe that the decision in this case should rest with the voters who elected him. If they are happy to have an MP multitasking on an unprecedented scale, they can re-elect him. If not, they can replace him with someone else. The people of Knutsford, Wilmslow and Alderley Edge have shown in the past that, if sufficiently provoked, they can be famously independent minded.

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In my view it is much like MPs “crossing for floor” and switching from one party to another. Usually they do it shamelessly, without taking the Chiltern Hundreds and calling a byelection. An honourable exception was Douglas Carswell, when he left the Conservatives and joined Ukip (though whether he is now at ease there is another matter).

So here is a suggestion: that George should do this democratically and leave it to the people. It would be a high-profile byelection but none the worse for that. If they are happy to have an MP who is also a newspaper editor, they can return him for a fifth time. If not, they can replace him with someone else. Since it turfed out an MP over the Falklands war, Tatton was never a run-of-the-mill constituency.

It would be a fascinating contest and one that I would watch from afar – as also, no doubt, would Neil Hamilton.