Politics

George Osborne hails Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the future of political style


George Osborne has hailed left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as the future of political style. 

The former Tory Chancellor even went as far as to say that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour had succeeded in exploiting the “new form of politics” enabled by social media.

The politician turned Evening Standard editor said his 90s style of politics now belongs to the ‘dinosaur age’.

Mr Osborne called the first-term congresswoman, colloquially known as AOC, “one of the most famous politicians in the world”.

He asked: “Who here has seen AOC’s take down of corrupt party funding? Or heard about her Green New Deal?

“Lots of you. Through her social media posts,” he said.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is already known across the world

 

He said that in a different era we wouldn’t have heard of her or her ideas.

And he acknowledged that while the Tories are with “its dwindling elderly membership based on a model of constituency associations from the Victorian age” was vulnerable, Labour had taken advantage of the internet’s potential.

He said: “Take the 2017 election. I think it’s fair to say that Jeremy Corbyn got consistently negative coverage in most newspaper outlets.  Pages of it, every day.

Theresa May , by contrast, got pages of adulatory press.

“But when the vote came, it was close and she lost the Tory majority.

“Fleet Street didn’t determine the outcome. The public did.”

Mr Osborne also presented a solution for funding the media suggesting that readers should get paid for their data.

The former Chancellor turned Evening Standard editor told an audience in London that the idea of a ‘data dividend’ had started in Silicon Valley and was now gaining traction in politics in California.

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But he asked why it couldn’t happen in the UK.

Mr Osborne, who joked that he became Chancellor of the Exchequer after failing to make it as a journalist as a young graduate, argued that the idea could help businesses other than social media and search companies.

He said: “If the consumers owned their data, rather than one or two big producers, then we could all compete for their custom, and their data would follow.”


Mr Osborne admitted: “It sounds like a policy from the left.

“But breaking open monopolies, pricing a market externality, putting power in the hands of consumers and spreading wealth are pretty Conservative ideas.”

He said: “Those platforms know who we are, where we live, who are friends are, what we watch and how long for, what we buy and what we search for.

“It’s very valuable information. Indeed the world’s most expensive companies have been created on the back of it.  

“For all that data helps them direct the right advertisers to you – and then take a big cut. 

“And they don’t share the data with the producers of the content, like newspapers, that is drawing people to their platforms. 

“But the data is generated by you – and you’re handing it over for free.”

He said: “It seems strange that you should be paid for watching all those funny videos and wasting hours on those games.

“But people do pay to know what you’ve been doing with your time – they just don’t pay you.”

Mr Osborne, who had no previous experience of journalism before taking on the top job at the London paper, the media had made the “fateful decision” to offer up their content for free in the hope that advertising revenue would pay for it.

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And he praised the decision of the Evening Standard in making the “counterintuitive” decision to offer the paper for free.

In a lecture entitled ‘The Politics of Newspapers’ for The Hugh Cudlipp Lecture 2019 which is sponsored by the Daily Mirror, he said that the backlash against so-called fake news would help to insure there is a future for good quality of journalism.

Jeremy Corbyn was given a hard time by most of the press

 

He said the “scandal of fake news” held a “glimmer of hope” because it showed that “people cared”.

He said: “Reputable companies can’t afford to see their products placed alongside foreign subversion and deliberate disinformation.

“We should keep the pressure up on their boards and shareholders.”

He said that people were starting to turn away from the “excesses” of the digital revolution.

Mr Osborne said that the real solution was newspapers.

“The answer to all of this is to turn to an organisation that employs properly-trained journalists, thorough sub-editing and legally-accountable editors,” he said.

He praised recent agenda-changing exclusives and campaigns by traditional media, saying: “It’s recent investigations by newspapers that have exposed the Windrush scandal, the misdeeds of Philip Green and, in our paper, how the profits of opioid addiction finds its way into the arts institutions of the country.

“These were print stories widely followed on broadcast and online.

He added: “A website of celebrity photos, or online lists of the ten best Taylor Swift songs, might generate a lot of traffic and be a great business – but it’s not having a huge influence on the direction the nation is taking.”

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