George Osborne

George Osborne
George Osborne, millionaire newspaper editor
Born	Gideon Oliver Osborne 1971-05-23 London
Alma mater	Magdalen College, Oxford
Religion	Anglicanism
Children	Luke Liberty
Spouse	Frances
Member of	Bullingdon Club, Franco-British Colloque, Hoover Institution/Fellows, Notting Hill Set
Party	Conservative
First Secretary of State  In office 8 May 2015 - 13 July 2016 Preceded by William Hague  Chancellor of the Exchequer  In office 11 May 2010 - 13 July 2016 Preceded by Alistair Darling Succeeded by Philip Hammond  Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer  In office 5 May 2005 - 11 May 2010 Deputy Philip Hammond, Philip Hammond, Theresa Villiers  Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury  In office 14 June 2004 - 5 May 2005  Member of Parliament for Tatton In office 7 June 2001 - Present Preceded by Tony Benn, Peter Brooke, David Clark, Robin Corbett, Archie Hamilton, Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine, Tom King, Nicholas Lyell, John Major, John Morris, Ray Whitney, Shaun Woodward

George Osborne, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, is Senior Adviser to the world's biggest fund manager, US investment firm Blackrock (at a salary of £650,000 for four days work a month) and takes up his duties as editor of London's Evening Standard early in May 2017 (salary unknown). As of 2016, he received £786,450 from the Washington Speakers Bureau, receives £120,000 per annum as a Kissinger fellow (a US academic programme run by the McCain Institute) and is paid £74,000 pa as Conservative MP for Tatton in Cheshire.

In June 2016, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was reported to have an offshore family trust worth £4.5 million:

"He says that he will pay the tax on the money when it comes back onshore. Of course, it never will."

Background

George Osborne is a former public school boy and heir to the Osborne and Little wallpaper fortune, he says he has been a Conservative all of his life. He describes one of his earliest jobs in politics, as official Conservative Party observer at Labour's annual conference, as the worst he has had.

"War on Terror"

George Osborne announced in November 2015 that the government was planning to hire 1000 more spies across Britain's secret services to help fight the "war on terror" in a spending increase which was "all about putting the security of British families first". Just a few days before he had suggested that a "wide-ranging set of government spending cuts" was necessary.

Bush fan

David Morrison writes:

In an article in The Spectator on 28 February 2004, he confessed to being a long term fan of George Bush:

“I’m a signed-up, card-carrying Bush fan. I have been ever since I met him when he was governor of Texas. … He found an answer to this question: what is the Right for in the age of Clinton–Blair? The Conservatives would do well to listen and learn.” (see Osborne’s website here)

As befits a fan of George, he was gung ho for invading Iraq. As early as 29 April 2002, a year before the war, he lectured Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, in the House of Commons on the necessity for military planning for a ground invasion:

“Both the Prime Minister and the American President have made it clear that military action against Iraq is at least an option, even if no decisions have been taken. Can the Secretary of State reassure the House—or at least, the Opposition—that intensive preparations are under way for the contingency of military action, including a possible ground campaign; otherwise, the threat against Saddam Hussein is hollow?”

To be fair to him, he didn’t pretend that the invasion was about disarming Iraq of “weapons of mass destruction”: he simply wanted “regime change” in Baghdad. In a House of Commons debate on 22 October 2003, he was one of the very few backbenchers to defend the decision to invade, and to do it with vigour:

“It is also worth stating in the House that the decision taken that day was right, and that those who supported it should not be defensive about the way they voted. Moreover, those who supported the decision should not feel defensive about saying that those who opposed the war in that vote were wrong. They were wrong when they prophesied a long and bloody war of attrition. They were wrong when they prophesied a mass slaughter in Baghdad. They were wrong when they forecast a humanitarian catastrophe, which never arose. They were wrong when they predicted an exodus of millions of refugees, which did not happen. Indeed, they are wrong now when they say that post-war Iraq is a disaster and that the world is a more dangerous place because we have got rid of Saddam Hussein. We who supported military action should have the confidence to take on and demolish the arguments that we successfully took on and demolished in March.”

Understandably, he has not repeated this vigorous defence of the invasion since, in the House of Commons.

Former Conservative MP Matthew Parris writes:

Listen to this: “England is going back to sleep. And little wonder when we’re told every day by sages in our national media that the War on Terror is misconceived, that the terrorist threat is exaggerated, that what we’ve done in the last three years has only made matters worse, and that the Iraq war was a ghastly mistake that is best forgotten . . . There are few voices to be heard putting the other view: that the terrorists pose a fundamental threat to our way of life, that fight them we must, that Iraq was part of that fight and that we are winning.”

This is taken from an article that appeared in The Spectator only 22 months ago. Its author did not realise that within little more than a year he and his friend David Cameron would be the two most powerful figures in the Conservative Party. Or that in time they would be odds-on to form the next government.

“We did not choose the War on Terror,” George Osborne continued, beneath the headline “While England Sleeps”, “it chose us. We could try to walk away from it now. We could distance ourselves from America, say the Iraq war was a mistake . . . But it would not save us. For remember the words of the Madrid bombers before they set out to kill 200 innocents on their way to work: ‘We choose death while you choose life.’ With people like that it can only be a case of them or us.”

Eleven months after that article was written, suicide bombers struck in London. To what extent this was an al-Qaeda plot is debatable, but Osborne today is unlikely to think his view of the world unsupported by what happened then. The thought, sentiment and fervour behind his article are of a clever, thoughtful neoconservative: more Wolfowitz than Bush, more egg-head than jar-head, but neocon nonetheless.

Interests

In my capacity as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, support for my office is received from: Lord Harris of Peckham, Mr S Robertson, of London

Gifts, benefits and hospitality (UK) February 2006, I received upgrades from Virgin Airways on return flights London to Washington DC. (Registered 22 February 2006)[1]

Donations complaint

In 2008, The Daily Telegraph reports that Labour MPs John Mann and Kevan Jones had submitted a complaint about £500,000 in donations for shadow chancellor George Osborne. No further details were disclosed.

The Guardian adds that Osborne 'had failed to inform the parliamentary commissioner for standards of nearly £500,000 received last January from bankers'. again no further details were disclosed.

Affiliations

• trustee of the charity Arts & Business
• honorary president of The British Youth Council
• vice-president of the East Cheshire Hospice
• He was a Macmillan Cancer Relief Champion in 2005.Source
• Social Market Foundation - Policy Advisory Board member 2009.

Connections

Osborne is reported to have thanked Daniel Finkelstein 'for providing him with the lowdown on the Jewish community'.

External Resources

• George Osborne MP Conservative Party profile
• George Osborne for Tatton constituency site
• The Guardian George Osborne: Electoral History and Profile
• Hansard George Osborne
• Public Whip Voting Record — George Osborne MP, Tatton
• TheyWorkForYou.com George Osborne
• Westminster Parliamentary Record George Osborne MP

 

Quotes by George Osborne

Page	Quote
Bilderberg/2020	“Already some employers are demanding that their employees have vaccines. Leading a normal working life as part of society will become impossible without proof you’ve had a vaccine. Government shouldn’t stand in the way of that — it should facilitate it. As our real passports already say on the first page, Covid passports will “allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance”. Bring them on.”
Bilderberg/2021	“Already some employers are demanding that their employees have vaccines. Leading a normal working life as part of society will become impossible without proof you’ve had a vaccine. Government shouldn’t stand in the way of that — it should facilitate it. As our real passports already say on the first page, Covid passports will “allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance”. Bring them on.”
COVID-19/Perpetrators/Bilderberg	“Already some employers are demanding that their employees have vaccines. Leading a normal working life as part of society will become impossible without proof you’ve had a vaccine. Government shouldn’t stand in the way of that — it should facilitate it. As our real passports already say on the first page, Covid passports will “allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance”. Bring them on.”

 

An appointment by George Osborne

Appointee	Job	Appointed	End
Neil O'Brien	Special Adviser	November 2012	2017

 

Events Participated in

Event	Start	End	Location(s)	Description
Bilderberg/2006	8 June 2006	11 June 2006	Canada Ottawa	54th Bilderberg, held in Canada. 133 guests
Bilderberg/2007	31 May 2007	3 June 2007	Turkey Istanbul	The 55th Bilderberg meeting, held in Turkey
Bilderberg/2008	5 June 2008	8 June 2008	US Virginia Chantilly	The 56th Bilderberg, Chantilly, Virginia, 139 guests
Bilderberg/2009	14 May 2009	17 May 2009	Greece Vouliagmeni	The 57th Bilderberg
Bilderberg/2011	9 June 2011	12 June 2011	Switzerland Hotel Suvretta St. Moritz	59th meeting, in Switzerland, 129 guests
Bilderberg/2013	6 June 2013	9 June 2013	Watford UK	The 2013 Bilderberg group meeting.
Bilderberg/2014	29 May 2014	1 June 2014	Denmark Copenhagen Marriott Hotel	The 62nd Bilderberg, with 136 guests, held in Copenhagen
Bilderberg/2015	11 June 2015	14 June 2015	Austria Telfs-Buchen	The 63rd meeting, 128 Bilderbergers met in Austria
Bilderberg/2017	1 June 2017	4 June 2017	US Virginia Chantilly	The 65th Bilderberg Meeting
Bilderberg/2018	7 June 2018	10 June 2018	Italy Turin Hotel Torino Lingotto Congress	The 66th Bilderberg Meeting, in Turin, Italy, known for months in advance after an unprecedented leak by the Serbian government.
Munich Security Conference/2019	15 February 2019	17 February 2019	Germany Munich Bavaria	The 55th Munich Security Conference, which included "A Spreading Plague" aimed at "identifying gaps and making recommendations to improve the global system for responding to deliberate, high consequence biological events."
WEF/Annual Meeting/2008	23 January 2008	27 January 2008	World Economic Forum Switzerland	At the 2008 summit, Klaus Schwab called for a coordinated approach, where different 'stakeholders' collaborate across geographical, industrial, political and cultural boundaries."
WEF/Annual Meeting/2009	23 January 2009	27 January 2009	World Economic Forum Switzerland	Chairman Klaus Schwab outlined five objectives driving the Forum’s efforts to shape the global agenda, including letting the banks that caused the 2008 economic crisis keep writing the rules, the climate change agenda, over-national government structures, taking control over businesses with the stakeholder agenda, and a "new charter for the global economic order".
WEF/Annual Meeting/2013	23 January 2013	27 January 2013	World Economic Forum Switzerland	2500 mostly unelected leaders met to discuss "leading through adversity"
WEF/Annual Meeting/2014	22 January 2014	25 January 2014	World Economic Forum Switzerland	2604 guests in Davos considered "Reshaping The World"
WEF/Annual Meeting/2015	21 January 2015	24 January 2015	World Economic Forum Switzerland	Attended by a lot of people. This page lists only the 261 "Public Figures".
WEF/Annual Meeting/2016	20 January 2016	23 January 2016	World Economic Forum Switzerland	Attended by over 2500 people, both leaders and followers, who were explained how the Fourth Industrial Revolution would changed everything, including being a "revolution of values".
WEF/Annual Meeting/2019	22 January 2019	25 January 2019	World Economic Forum Switzerland	"The reality is that we are in a Cold War [against China] that threatens to turn into a hot one."
WEF/Annual Meeting/2020	21 January 2020	24 January 2020	World Economic Forum Switzerland	This mega-summit of the world's ruling class and their political and media appendages happens every year, but 2020 was special, as the continuous corporate media coverage of COVID-19 started more or less from one day to the next on 20/21 January 2020, coinciding with the start of the meeting.

 

Related Document

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Why Isn’t Everyone In Favour of Taxing Financial Speculation?	report	19 April 2016	Robert Reich	Bernie Sanders wants to tax stock trades at a rate of 0.5 percent (a trade of $1,000 would cost $5), and bond trades at 0.1 percent. The tax would reduce incentives for high-speed trading, insider deal-making, and short-term financial betting. Sanders’ 0.5 percent tax could thereby finance public investments that enlarge the economic pie rather than merely rearrange its slices – like tuition-free public education.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.