Osborne sets out his stall

George Osborne’s Budget speech was a party political broadcast before the general election in a few weeks time.

With only a few weeks to go before the general election, it was inevitable that George Osborne's Budget speech would be a party political broadcast. Hailing Britain as the "comeback country", he promised "£10 off a tank with the Tories" and had a dig at Ed Miliband's two kitchens.

Most measures had been leaked beforehand, as usual. The only real surprise was a new "help to buy" Isa, where every £200 saved into a deposit for a house gets a £50 government top-up.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.