George osborne

George Osborne’s battle to become Conservative leader may well be tougher than the battle he faces from the Labour opposition. The Chancellor delivers his eighth Budget tomorrow with only 31 percent of Britons believing he has done a good job as Chancellor. The backdrop for his set-piece speech is perhaps more troubling: only 26 percent say their personal finances are better off than last year and 31 percent think the economy has improved. And yet, despite this, Osborne and Cameron have a 15 point lead over Labour’s team on economic trust. While Osborne has received many plaudits for moving to the political centre ground after May last year, he has seen only small benefit so far.

Based on the tone that he took on the Andrew Marr Show this morning, we can expect George Osborne to take a rather defiant tone as he unveils this week’s Budget. The Chancellor has had a difficult few weeks, not least because of the retreat on pension reforms and defeat on Sunday trading, but he tried to turn this into a virtue, saying: ‘The big picture is people look at Britain and they see a country getting its act together and putting its house in order. And if you look at what we do as a government, I think we take big, radical, reforming steps. Yeah, we have got a small majority, so do we win every vote? No, we don’t. But you can do two things in the face of that. ‘You can either shut up shop and do nothing - that is not me as a politician.

Don’t expect ‘fireworks’ from the Budget one of Osborne’s closest political allies told me this week. Ahead of the Budget on Wednesday the Chancellor finds himself hemmed in by the EU referendum, fraying Tory discipline and the worsening global economic situation, I say in my Sun column this week. A Budget four years out from a general election is normally when a government takes some risks. But I doubt Osborne will be doing much of that on Wednesday. First, he doesn’t want to do anything to make the EU referendum more difficult for the government to win—the intensity with which David Cameron is campaigning reveals how worried he is about losing it. Second, Cameron and Osborne know that they can’t rely on Tory MPs at the moment.

In the past few minutes, the government has lost its attempt to relax Sunday trading laws in the Commons 317 votes to 286. The rebellion has been brewing for months, with ministers playing a game of chicken with angry Tory backbenchers right up to the vote. A last-minute attempt by George Osborne to stave off the rebellion by proposing a series of pilots of the relaxed rules, tabled as a manuscript amendment in the middle of the morning, failed when the Speaker rejected it. This has not helped Osborne’s standing amongst MPs, with some remarking that the whole exercise had shown that the Chancellor had still not learned what the limits of the Tory party’s patience were.

After a few weeks of banging on about Europe, Downing Street hopes that there will be more of a domestic focus in Westminster for a little while at least. The Budget is approaching, and George Osborne is already coming to terms with what he can and can’t do. It turns out that now is not the time to be politically radical, as Tory MPs are already in a rather bad mood about Europe, and trying to change the subject won’t really make enough of a difference. So the Chancellor has already had to retreat on reforms he was considering to pension tax relief after it was made clear to him that Conservative MPs would not weather it.

The Chancellor has today declared a ceasefire on Middle Britain: he will not go ahead with his planned pensions raid, where he was intending to erode the relief due to upper-rate taxpayers. The Times splashes on the news, and says that "pressing ahead with the plans may well have dented his popularity within the party as a leadership battle approaches." If this was his motive, it was not without foundation: the tax credits debacle, his Google gaffe and, most recently, his positioning himself as a EU cheerleader has not endeared him to the Tory members who will decide who succeeds David Cameron. The bookmakers show his odds plunging (below) and have today cut his odds on being sacked by Christmas to 6-1. Osborne has recovered before (see above graph) and can recover again.

This week Jeremy Corbyn provided the Tories with much comedy fodder after he announced that Syriza's Yanis Varoufakis would be advising Labour. It was then revealed that Varoufakis's old chum Paul Mason -- who is stepping down from his role as Channel 4's economics editor -- will also be helping the party -- contributing a lecture to Labour’s New Economics series. Osborne couldn't resist ridiculing John McDonnell over the appointments during Treasury questions.

John Bercow hit out at Greg Hands for his 'long-winded, boring and unnecessary' answer in the Commons: Ken Livingstone said that his history of rebellions, as well as those rebellions orchestrated by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, proved they were right: The former London mayor also said Labour was 'completely out of kilter with the membership' and that it was time for Labour MPs to come to terms with Corbyn: George Osborne had a dig at Labour's appointment of Yanis Varoufakis.