George Osborne
George Osborne
George Osborneis a British Conservative Party politician who has been Member of Parliamentfor Tatton since 2001. Under the premiership of David Cameron, from 2010 to 2016, Osborne served as Chancellor of the Exchequer...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth23 May 1971
bed chancellor closest experience four himself item lay leadership lying morning news programme realised ruled shadow thinking turned
I had the closest thing I have ever had to an out-of-body experience lying in bed one morning. I turned on the 'Today' programme and item four on the news was: 'The shadow chancellor has ruled himself out of the leadership.' I lay there thinking that's interesting, then I realised it was me.
thinking looks economy
I think you can look at the British economy with confidence.
thinking balance rich
Just as we should never balance the budget on the backs of the poor, so it is an economic delusion to think you can balance it only on the wallets of the rich.
country thinking law
I was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it's within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don't think that's right.
thinking people support
The British people think that if someone is disabled, then they should get all the care and support that we can offer.
strong thinking people
I think the British people have a strong sense of what is fair.
thinking bail needs
We need to think deeply about whether we can sustain banks that are not only too big to fail, but potentially too big to bail.
absurd attention campaign desperate divert issues leadership matter merely photo smear
The allegations are completely untrue, and dredging up a photo from when I was 22 years old is pretty desperate stuff. This is merely part of an absurd smear campaign to divert attention from the issues that matter in this leadership contest.
create hard remain rushing stop time
You really have to try hard to create space and, at least for a time, stop the political world from rushing in. The important thing is to remain sane.
believes borrowing fund lead lower money somebody taxes
I'm a Conservative who believes in lower taxes. They lead to a more enterprising economy. But I'm not somebody who believes you can fund lower taxes by borrowing more money.
met studies targets unlike whether
Well can I just say unlike my predecessors, Conservative and Labour, I have set up an independent body that studies whether what I'm saying is true, whether I've met the targets that I set out.
believes benefits
If someone believes that living on benefits is a lifestyle choice, then we need to make them think again.
chancellor country job mind needs prime
What this country needs is a Chancellor with his mind on the job not on inheriting the Prime Minister's crown.
blair brown close closer euro hand junior learned life major minister party perhaps problems work
Working in the Major government, we all saw, pretty close at hand - perhaps closer than a junior minister - the problems that the party was facing, ... Those who learned the lessons, and those who didn't. I did. I still for the life of me can't work out why Blair and Brown didn't. The euro would be like an ERM that we couldn't even leave.