There should be a term in anthropology for what happens to a certain type of Tory male in middle age. The type who after decades of espousing often unpopular causes suddenly attempts to ingratiate himself with the masses. Ordinarily this breakdown expresses itself in a desire to legalise drugs, but it can take other forms.

Anyway, the moment that George Osborne was made chairman of the British Museum I expected what has come to pass. Osborne has long been a prime candidate for a Tory midlife crisis. He always had too much of the ‘pleaser’ about his personality, despite not being remotely pleasing. But someone who has had a whole stadium’s boos ring in his ears – as Osborne did during the London Olympics – is prone to seek to make a plea deal later.

And if you become the chairman of the British Museum, there is one rather obvious way to try to please. The Elgin Marbles practically sit awaiting the arrival of such a figure. So it is that Osborne has been negotiating a deal to send the Marbles to Athens in the promise that Athens will send some never-before-seen-in-London treasures this way in return.

I know a little of this to-and-fro. Some years ago I was giving a speech at the Onassis Centre in Athens and my hosts arranged some sideline activities. One was to go to the Parthenon and then be shown the new museum that the Greeks had built to host the Marbles should they be returned. My guide seemed to be under the misapprehension that I was a figure of great significance. Specifically, she seemed to be under the misapprehension that it might somehow be in my gift to return the Marbles.

The result was one of the most aggressive museum tours I can remember. The guide continually informed me of the treachery of the British and the grandeur of the Greeks. At some point in the new museum she showed me all the spaces ready for ‘when you return’ the Marbles. The emphasis was very much on ‘you’. At another point she showed me the tiniest piece of marble that been given to the Greeks by the Vatican (who like the French also have portions of the Acropolis) when the new museum was opened. ‘And do you know what your ambassador brought?’ she demanded of me. ‘A box of chocolates,’ I ventured. ‘Nothing,’ she spat out.

The point is that I am fully aware of the pressure that the Greeks can bring on people when it comes to the matter of the Marbles. It is my belief that it is a sort of mystical issue for them. As though if the Parthenon were reassembled on site something magical would occur, and all the corruption and incompetence of the Greek state would be blasted away in this blaze of glorious reunifying light. Well, Osborne seems to have fallen for it. And so it appears that he has decided to give the Marbles back ‘on loan’, without any awareness that he is about to finalise a hostage swap so inept that it might as well have been negotiated by the villain in an Austin Powers movie. When the time comes for the Greeks to hand any such loan back, any Greek citizen might simply go to the courts and get an injunction to stop the process. They might even find that the Greek judiciary is sympathetic to their cause.

All of which is at one with the new manner in which museums across our country are run. Where the trustees and chair used to be in charge of preserving the collections, the new type of museum director behaves like they have inherited a warehouse of ‘hot’ items – televisions and white goods that have fallen off the back of trucks. The ahistorical claims of a number of recent ‘historians’ have hurt the wetter type of museum director. And so there is the endless case of the Marbles, and the Benin bronzes (catch them while you can), and every artefact to follow.

Perhaps it is this obsession with a few high-status pieces of hot property that has allowed a real type of theft to go on under the noses of the people in charge of the British Museum’s management. Because it has turned out that while everyone was obsessed with the idea of historical theft, someone on the inside was stealing artefacts very much in the present day. It is currently thought that perhaps as many as 2,000 artefacts from the British Museum have been stolen in recent years – and not even stolen very well. A number of the artefacts were put on the market. Some were even put up for sale on eBay and other online platforms. People noticed this, including a dealer based in Denmark, and alerted the British Museum over two years ago. But the museum assured them that all was well, that the collection was intact and at no risk. Now it turns out that this was certainly not true. A member of the museum’s staff has been sacked and the museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, has resigned.

Perhaps this could be a moment to draw out a slightly broader lesson. In recent years I have often suggested that corporations that suddenly cover themselves in pride memorabilia or talk about ‘taking the knee’ or other such fads should be regarded with intense suspicion. It was after the financial crisis of 2008 that the banks started talking about environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). All of it, to my mind, is the cheapest form of camouflage to distract from their wrongdoing – a ‘wokescreen’. Look at the way that Coutts inexplicably covered itself in BLM-related materials in recent years. You could see that bank’s recent troubles coming, and more people should have done.

Well it should be the same with the British Museum and all other cultural institutions (Tate Britain comes to mind). Whenever these collections start spouting about voguish matters or talking about their collections as though they were stolen property, let us set our watches and wait for the resulting scandal. Ostentatious virtue is usually a cover for something else entirely. Tories in the midst of a midlife crisis especially should remember this.