George Osborne
A credit to the nation
Cameron was right about one thing: not sacking Lord Freud
Osborne’s decisive moment
George Osborne usually tells his aides to prepare for each Budget as if it were his last. This time round,…
A truly radical review of business rates is worth more than all the Budget spin
Of all the measures talked up ahead of the Budget, the reannouncement of a ‘radical’ review of the business rates…
Portrait of the week
Home Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, said that ‘a huge burden of responsibility’ lay with those who acted as apologists…
Something useful for your Budget, George: fast-track approval for challenger banks
In my Yorkshire town of Helmsley the NatWest branch, originally an outpost of Beckett & Co of Leeds, has closed…
Northern exposure
George Osborne on his love affair with Greater Manchester, and his party’s need for ‘a bit of the Heseltine’
Just in time, Osborne answers Labour’s 50p tax trick with a bumper monthly surplus
Last week’s public borrowing and tax-receipt figures, headlined ‘Chancellor hails biggest monthly surplus in seven years’, received considerably less attention…
Investment: Build your own pension
Deciding the destiny of your retirement is about to get easier. But be sure you know the answers to these questions first…
Can the Tories pass George’s 13 tests?
These days George Osborne is rarely seen in public without a hard hat and a hi-vis jacket. But he used…
Barometer
A fatal shot The sad death of Australian batsman Philip Hughes was a reminder that a cricket ball can kill.…
Is that a black swan I see before me? Cheap oil has strange consequences
This oil price slump is turning into a ‘black swan’: one of those economic events that seem to come from…
How HS2 blights lives
Whether the high-speed rail line is built or not, it is destroying the retirements of people like my parents
How to keep your corporate reputation: forget the CSR, just get the basics right
A theme of this autumn has been conversations about corporate reputation and how it is guarded or lost. To name…
Dicing with debt
George Osborne has declared victory over Ed Balls, the IMF and all the others who warned that his austerity measures…
Wonga lent too easily at shocking rates, but it was often the borrowers who lied
‘Payday Lady is not trading at this time,’ says her website, sounding a little like La Dame aux camélias. Indeed (since…
Portrait of the week
Home The Commons, having been specially recalled, passed, by 524 votes to 43, a motion supporting ‘the use of UK…
Will Osborne’s tilt against Double Dutch tax dodgers play into Farage’s hands?
George Osborne’s promise to crack down on multinational companies’ avoidance of UK taxes by the use of impenetrable devices such…
Diary
This week marks another milestone in my 15-year battle with Richard Branson. Ever since he unsuccessfully sued me in 1999…
The welfare line
George Osborne proposed an attractive idea this week: that spending on state benefits should be diverted into new infrastructure in…
Boris jumps in
The next Tory leadership battle has just begun
Nearly there, Darling
The success of the campaign to save the Union can be heard in the increasingly hysterical tone of independence supporters
I’m celebrating Glasgow’s Games as my forecast comes true at last
‘Perhaps I should shift my prediction to 23 July 2014,’ I wrote in April 2012. ‘That’s the opening of the…
Osborne’s northern ‘super-city’ looks like a cynical vote-grab – but I’m all for it
When John Prescott used to wax garrulous about a ‘superhighway’ from Hull to Liverpool, everyone assumed it was a wheeze…
Highland swing
Danny Alexander, the coalition’s senior Scot, on cricket,on his battle for Britain and his colleague George Osborne
Diary
My trips to meet Russians in Russia these days are a little less controversial than my encounter with them in…
