A man purportedly working for the Conservative Party as Chancellor of the Exchequer has been revealed to be a hoax.
Emily Rosengreen
The FET, Monday 20th June
Other Articles
“George Osborne” gained notoriety throughout the United Kingdom and abroad by initiating cuts in welfare benefits and outlining other plans to reduce the fiscal deficit.
However, recent doubts about his legitimacy have culminated in his exposure as Afsana al-Rashid, a lesbian blogger from Saudi Arabia.
The news has been a blow to right-wing economists in Britain, many of whom feel that the hoax has seriously damaged the cause of fiscal conservatism. It is feared that other millionaires who really are directing economic policy may now be dismissed as frauds.
David Cameron, a Conservative multi-millionaire and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has declared his disappointment that al-Rashid was not uncovered sooner.
“Ideally, since George turned out to be fictitious, it would have been best to sort this all out before we let him deliver the budget,” Cameron told reporters.
Others, however, claim that they had suspected Osborne all along. Frank Munton, a right-wing blogger and economics enthusiast, says that Cameron was “a fool” for not seeing the signs.
“The back-story was just a little bit too stereotypical to be believable,” said Munton. “A member of the Irish aristocracy, heir to a baronetcy, a member of the Bullingdon club. It sounds like just the sort of thing that some leftist would dream up to mock us.”
“And then you hear that his first name was actually Gideon. That’s when the penny dropped that it was definitely a hoax.”
Confirmation of the hoax was established when the photos used to depict Osborne were traced back to the LinkedIn profile of an accountant from Bedford.
While al-Rashid has apologised for misleading the British electorate, she maintains that her actions were designed only to attract wider attention to the issue of deficit reduction.
