The four measures I’m hoping to see in Osborne’s 2015 Budget

Now is the perfect time for George Osborne to make some much-needed reforms in the Budget, says Matthew Lynn.

The battered red box will havebeen filled with all the right papers.The leaks will have been placed in the newspapers, the Lib Dems brought on board, and the measures targeting swing voters in marginal seats will have been calibrated to help the Tories win the election. As he prepares his Budget for next week, George Osborne will no doubt make sure he has ticked all the right boxes.

And yet, in what in truth is likely to be his last Budget, Osborne should throw off the shackles and have a blast. Whatever he announces is likely to be quickly over-whelmed by the election campaign. There probably won't even be time to implement it.

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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.