Sack Osborne and give Nick Clegg the job

George Osborne's term in office has been a disaster, says Matthew Lynn. It's time for the chancellor of the exchequer to make way for Nick Clegg.

With every fresh piece of dismal news on the economy, the case against George Osborne staying as chancellor grows stronger. The British economy has flatlined in the two years since he has been in Number Eleven and is about to go into another big downturn. He's shown no inclination to get to grips with getting Britain's economy back on track. But who should replace him?

Most Westminster insiders would tip William Hague. He has the gravitas for the job, and his Yorkshire burr would be a lot better suited to selling tough decisions than Osborne's London public school tones. Or there's the technocratic defence secretary Philip Hammond. Or even, at a stretch, Ken Clarke: he pulled the economy out of a deep hole in the mid-1990s and might be able to pull off the same trick again in this decade.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.