George Osborne must bitterly regret quitting politics

I am no psychologist but I don’t think you have to be one to appreciate that there is some turmoil going on in the mind of the man who wrote the Evening Standard’s four front page headlines today. ‘May Hung Out to Dry’, ‘May’s Right Royal Mess’, ‘May’s Irish Bailout’, ‘Queen of Denial’ – these headlines have been presented by many today as a sign of a man enjoying himself, of revelling in schadenfreude. True, none of these headlines is exactly unfair, but the obsessive search for ever more painful ways of twisting the knife into the Prime Minister is surely indicative of something going on deep in the soul of the author. May is not the only person who made a bum decision a few weeks ago and is now left bitterly regretting it – the same is true of George Osborne himself.

Had the former Chancellor not been tempted to make a sudden career change into journalism, and then forced into surrendering his seat in the Commons after protests that it was wrong for him to draw an MPs’ salary while working full-time editing a newspaper, he would now be in pole position to take over from the fatally-wounded May.