Osborne masters the politics of art

As MPs spent the afternoon debating second jobs, a former colleague who knows all about the subject was holding court elsewhere. George Osborne, the part time banker and full time mischief-maker, was unveiling a plaque in Piccadilly to the legendary caricaturist James Gillray – a satirist who would no doubt have had great fun with the former Chancellor.

Wearing one of his many, many hats, Osborne – in his capacity as chairman of the British Museum – told the assembled crowds of his love of the great British tradition of print cartoons, remarking: 

As a teenager I used to go to Camden Passage to the antique shops there to try and get hold of some Gillray prints. The very first one I ever bought was called ‘A Merry Dance’, and it was all about a coalition between the Conservatives and the Liberals. Of course that was all consigned to history back in those days… There’s a basic truth about politicians which is that you’d much rather have a cartoon about you than not have a cartoon about you. However gross or hideous or unpleasant the cartoon is, it’s better to be drawn than not drawn. I also used to take the view that there are only really two types of cartoons – you’re either being killed or you are killing, and it was better to do the latter than the former.

And Osborne certainly commissioned plenty of such cartoons when, as editor of the Evening Standard, he made it his mission to  have Theresa May ‘chopped up in bags in my freezer.’ Praising Standard cartoonist Christian Adams – also in attendance – Osborne told the crowd that cartoons serve to both ‘lighten the paper and make it more serious at the same time’ to ‘send a message that it’s a serious political publication with a serious message each day on politics.’ If true, Mr S wonders what Steve Bell says of the Guardian?

After the unveiling, Steerpike’s spy on the scene overheard the Old Pauline recalling how, as a young Tory adviser in the 1990s, he had to brief one famous politician, arriving at their home to discover a gallery festooned with 100 cartoons of the grandee in question. Clearly such vanity survives on the green benches to this day, judging by the number of calls Osborne complained of receiving first thing in the morning from politicians and ‘even members of the royal family’ desperate to get their hands on caricatures depicting themselves.

From the art of politics to the politics of art indeed.