George ‘austerity’ Osborne becomes chair of British Museum whose funding he cut
George Osborne has been appointed to the Chair of the Trustees of the British Museum from October replacing the FT’s Richard Lambert.
Osborne has had quite a number of very well paid sinecures since he stepped down as an MP in 2017 as this Guardian report notes:
As Chancellor his 2010 Budget reduced funding for Museums by 15%. The BM’s recent controversial partnership with BP which has attracted protests was justified on the basis of the need to raise funds.
Osborne claims he has always loved the BM. While his appointment certainly owes a good deal more to the Chumocracy than the meritocracy he does have a 2:1 in modern history from Oxford. It is not the ideal historical perspective for the BM which tends to deal in not so modern history (though far from exclusively so) but it should mean he has some general appreciation of some of the historical issues the BM faces.
Professor Dan Hicks and others have raised the question of why the BM has retained artefacts which were in fact stolen or plundered from other countries during the imperial era. The Elgin Marbles are the most well known of these artefacts but there are many others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Hicks_(archaeologist)
Their retention in London is of course part of the Tory Culture War in 2021 and it probably isn’t too difficult to work out which side Osborne is on in that war….
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