George osborne

George Osborne is the most political of Chancellors, and his Budget today will doubtless read like a party political broadcast. The economic momentum is on his side: soaring employment, plunging inflation, fuel prices down. But he has had more trouble with the public finances than he expected (as things turned out he could afford it, as global borrowing rates have plunged). But in the interests of balance, here are a few economic bloopers that he won’t be boasting about. 1. The deficit plan: the single biggest disappointment of his five years. Once, he defined himself by his ability to abolish the structural deficit by the 2015 election. Now, it’ll be 2018-19 before the books are balanced. He has overseen many

‘Labour has vowed not to feature Prime Minister David Cameron on billboards ahead of the general election,’ reported the BBC last month. ‘The party said it would focus on issues rather than personalities. and not use negative personal campaigning.’ It seems that has not stretched to the party’s email campaigning though. Steerpike’s inbox has been inundated with fundraising emails from all of the parties, but a particularly naff example is doing the rounds today. Labour appear to have enlisted the help of people with identical names to Tory leaders to send out emails. Such as: I couldn’t resist jumping on the bandwagon here! I’m a Labour Party member of 25 years’ standing. I am

There is a subtle ideological shift going on in the Tory party. At the top of the party, there is an increasing appetite for a modern form of industrial strategy. As George Osborne argues in an interview in the current Spectator, ‘The Conservative party is at its strongest when it’s not the party that says there is no role for government and the state should just get out of the way… That is not a strand of Conservative thinking that, by itself, is enough. You need to have a bit of the Michael Heseltine: “I’m going to take the Docklands and build a financial centre here and build an airport here.”

Are we heading into a new Cold War? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, we revisit Vladimir Putin’s empire building plans and the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens debates his intentions with author Ben Judah. Is the West right to mistrust Putin? Do we have the moral upper hand regarding the situation in Ukraine? And should nations always assume that NATO and the EU always have better democratic solutions than Russia? Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth also discuss George Osborne’s interest in the north and what it means for the Tories’ electioneering plans. Will the Conservatives pick up support outside of their comfort areas? Should the Manchester area have devolved

Oh dear. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is not going to be pleased. Natalie Rowe, the former dominatrix who enjoyed a friendship with George Osborne in the early nineties, is planning a book to follow her autobiography. Further still, judging by the fact she is toying with the idea of calling it ‘Budge it’ – a phrase that bares a close resemblance to ‘budget’ – it could well feature Osborne again. Mr S has blanked out one of the words to spare blushes. For those who missed her initial book Chief Whip: Memoirs of a Dominatrix, which was released in 2013, Rowe gave a colourful account of her friendship with Osborne,

Naturally, when George Osborne and Ed Balls squared up in the Commons this afternoon for a showdown on the HSBC tax row, it wasn’t a particularly pretty affair. There was shouting, heckling, yowling – and the backbenchers were pretty aerated, too. Indeed, the Tories had turned up intending to throw the Shadow Chancellor off pace before he’d even started, shouting ‘ANSWER’ at him every time he tried to say a single word. Balls had clearly turned up thinking that dragging the Chancellor to the Commons to answer his urgent question was victory enough. But an urgent question is only a victory if the minister responding leaves the Chamber thinking that

Boris and George have been painting London town red this morning. First, the Tory duo took over the Tate Modern at the crack of dawn to show off a very large, and presumably expensive, banner for a speech on a ‘long term economic plan for London’. During this they announced that the London Overground will run 24 hours a day — eventually. This morning @Tate Modern the Chancellor @George_Osborne and I launched #LongTermEconomicPlan for London pic.twitter.com/cOZnwIf6xu — Boris Johnson (@MayorofLondon) February 20, 2015 Then en-route to a building site in Edgware, the Chancellor generously opened up his purse to buy the Mayor a sumptuous breakfast at a greasy spoon. In the photo, the chancellor looks lean in

Presumably as a way of getting out of an endless debate about receipts, Ed Balls has issued a letter with some detailed questions about tax evasion and HSBC (as opposed to tax avoidance and window cleaners). The letter asks three questions: 1. Why has there only been one prosecution out of 1,100 names? Was the “selective prosecution policy” a decision made by Ministers? 2. When were you first made aware of these files, what action did you take and did you discuss it with the Prime Minister? 3. Why did you and David Cameron appoint Lord Green as a Conservative peer and Minister months after the government received these files?