Do us all a favour, Mr Osborne, and scrap the Autumn Statement

Britain's economy needs less government meddling, not more, says Matthew Lynn. The Autumn Statement needs to go.

The excitement is not exactly building to fever pitch. Very few of us will have cleared out our diaries, and almost no one will have cancelled any holidays, or indeed postponed anything urgent, such as getting the car washed, or checking whether the boiler needs servicing.

As Chancellor George Osborne prepares to deliver his Autumn Statement next month, it is hard to imagine that even he is very interested in what it might say.

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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.