George Osborne

A mild panic on Saturday lunchtime as I’m getting ready for the big British Museum ball. First, the dress code is ‘red’ and, though I’m due on stage in hours, all I’ve got is a black tie. Second, I haven’t watched last night’s episode of The Celebrity Traitors, and someone at the party is bound to tell me what happened. So I dash to a florist to get a red flower for a buttonhole; then I speed-watch on iPlayer. Thank goodness I did, because who do I meet at the ball? Maya Jama – Traitor-in-Chief. First she compliments me on the flower, even though it’s so lame compared to her outfit, and then she’s telling me the ins and outs of her murders. Never meet your heroes, they say. What nonsense.

A couple of years ago we rented a villa in Ithaca. ‘Who wants to go see Odysseus’s palace?’ I said to everyone sitting by the pool. So I went alone. High on a hill overlooking the sea, among the pines, I found the remnants of a citadel. Last Friday evening I was transported back there by Christopher Nolan’s epic. Settling a few feet in front of the huge West End screen – the last seats available – my neighbour did what no one does in a cinema and introduced himself. He was a Labour minister, one of their brightest young stars, looking a little distracted. Watching a tale of betrayal and meandering missions: he was just preparing for the week ahead. If Britain had been fighting the Trojan war we’d be on our seventh Agamemnon by now.

This diary is late. Two months late. The columnists who missed my Evening Standard deadlines often had elaborate excuses. Mine is that I’ve been involved in working out who is going to own this magazine. We’ve seen some oddities in this particular drama. Those vehemently opposed to government interference in a free press suddenly calling for government laws to regulate press ownership. Columns from advocates of free trade and open investment in every industry except, it turns out, their own. I don’t doubt some are motivated solely by high principles; but it’s worth asking the question of others: do their high principles happen to accord with their view of who in practice they’d like to see own The Spectator and the Telegraph?

It’s a week for improbable comebacks. The Beatles are back at number one, Chelsea are scoring goals again and David Cameron is in Downing Street. The return of my friend to the front line is a Rishi Sunak relaunch that I can warmly welcome. There is a lot of goodwill out there just waiting for our current Prime Minister to find his groove. Now he’s given up trying to appease the unappeasable nationalist right, or claiming to be better than all that’s gone before, he has a decent chance of being listened to. Not every occupant of No. 10 would have had the courage to appoint a predecessor – the last three have all suffered from tall poppy syndrome.

The co-host of my new podcast once threatened to sue me for libel. For my part, I did everything I could to put him on the dole. If we’d lived in Tudor times we’d probably have tried to get each other’s heads chopped off. Now Thursdays will be spent with Ed Balls, as we record our weekly show Political Currency. Earlier this summer he was dancing at my wedding. I told him I thought it was an extraordinary turn of events when I recall the ferocity of our old debates. ‘Remember how we hated each other, Ed?’ He corrected me. ‘That’s not true. You and Gordon Brown hated each other. David Cameron and I never liked each other. But you and I always had mutual respect.’ He’s right.

I only voted in one no-confidence motion. The leader was Iain Duncan Smith, and it was a bit awkward. I spent hours every week helping Iain with Prime Minister’s Questions, and felt sorry for him. At the same time, his leadership was a disaster. Indeed, Tony Blair was going easy on him in the chamber just to keep him alive. So what to do? On the morning of the vote, I conferred with two other new MPs in the PMQ team — David Cameron and Boris Johnson. We all agreed he had to go and swore a pact. So off I went to cast my ballot. A few hours later, the deputy chief whip asked me if I’d seen Boris. He was the only MP who hadn’t voted yet. I set off to look and saw him heading for the gates out of Westminster.

Spring in Somerset — again. If someone had told me last February that I’d spend seven of the next 12 months here, I’d have explained that was impossible: I’ve always been a city boy. Three lockdowns later, and we’ve bought a home here. I love it. Snow, then snowdrops, now daffodils — and the wild garlic is coming up in the woods. Covid has converted me to the countryside. Bruton Place in Mayfair? Not for now. Bruton itself? Yes. There’s a Bruton Set, of course. They spend a lot of the time explaining why they didn’t want to be part of the Chipping Norton Set. I’ve met one of my heroes: Sir Don McCullin, the war photographer. He’s lived near here for decades. Before Christmas he showed me his archive of prints.

The best thing about the Evening Standard going to print at lunchtime is that we can be first to a story. The worst thing is that we can get that story wrong. On Monday, our splash headline about the Prime Minister and her Brexit deal was ‘Outnumbered. Outflanked. Out of time’. I thought we’d called it right. On Tuesday, I woke up to the headlines ‘May claims victory’ and wondered. Then Geoffrey Cox spoke and sank her premiership. Later that day he told the Commons it was highly unlikely David Cameron would ever have made him his attorney general. Geoffrey, you’re right. As this is The Spectator, we should talk up the benefits of Brexit. I’ve found one. I am back in touch with Mark Francois.

We Citizens of Nowhere have made our home in Davos this week. Where else? Those who think we’re a remote global elite hiding away behind barbed wire in a luxury Swiss ski resort have decided to travel all the way here to tell us. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell is braving the Glühwein to lecture us on Marxism. Theresa May is back, flush from her successful outing last year when she warned the audience here that they’d lose elections unless they understood how out of touch they’d become. Donald Trump is swapping cheeseburgers for Swiss fondue on his mission to put America first. They are all welcome. Davos Man understands that the struggle takes many forms.