Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Politics | 1 November 2008

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

issue 01 November 2008

A nanosecond is easily measured in Westminster as the time between a politician’s hearing of a colleague’s impending resignation and wondering ‘What’s in it for me?’ It takes perhaps a full second to construct a theory as to why the unfortunate soul had it coming and probably deserved it. It takes about a minute to draw up a shortlist of potential successors, and half an hour to start some gentle plotting. Sympathy comes last, if at all.

So for the few hours when George Osborne’s future was in doubt last week, the corridors and the urinals of Westminster were abuzz with versions of his political obituary. If he went, one shadow cabinet member told me, it would be not so much for his sins on board a Corfu yacht, but for his failure to take the fight to Gordon Brown on the economy or supply the party with a message.

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