“WHO IS my best friend in politics?” George Osborne asks. “David Cameron, I would say.”
The two most powerful men in Britain are godparents to each other’s children and have been close since entering Parliament together in 2001. “He is someone I trust and whose judgment I absolutely rely on. Living in Downing Street, you share a lot of similar experiences and pressures.”
With the election less than five weeks away, however, both men could soon find themselves thrown out of their jobs and ejected from the Downing Street flats where they have been tenants for the past five years.
If they are, the timing will be deeply ironic. Not only has the government recently helped a record number of people into work, but the Tories are preparing a housing revolution with a new pledge – announced today – to give a million more people the security of a home of their own through direct government help.
In an interview on the campaign trail with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Osborne sets out his plan for this “massive” 1980s-style boom in home ownership; hints at faster tax cuts; and plays down the idea that he could one day take over from his friend in No10.
HOME OWNERSHIP
“This is the best part of my job. It’s the thing that makes my job worth doing,” Mr Osborne declares, as he trudges through the mud on a soggy building site outside Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.
The 43-year-old Chancellor has shed his Westminster suit and tie and is wearing the uniform he most likes to be seen in: a hard hat and “hivis” jacket. Despite the conditions, his enthusiasm is clearly genuine. He has just spent half an hour chatting to Charlotte Spencer and Christian Speight, a young couple who have used the government’s Help to Buy loan scheme to purchase a home under construction.
“It reminds me of why we are doing this. Ultimately this is about people’s aspirations, their futures and their dreams,” he says.
“The Conservative Party is the party of home ownership. It’s the party of helping young families get on the property ladder, helping people move up the property ladder. We inherited a situation five years ago where the property market had crashed, there was no house-building at all.”
But through schemes like Help to Buy, young families can now get a mortgage again. “I think we can go further,” Mr Osborne says. “In the next parliament I would like to see over a million more people helped into home ownership by a Conservative government.
“I would like to see us double the number of firsttime buyers, up to half a million (a year). That is the kind of level we saw in the 1980s. There is no reason why our country can’t achieve that again,” he says.
RIGHT TO BUY
Mr Osborne says he will meet these ambitious targets through the expansion of schemes such as Help to Buy loans, in which the government takes a stake in new-build properties to help first-time buyers. The new “starter homes” scheme, offering 20 per cent discounts, has proved popular, and a “rejuvenated and refreshed” Right to Buy policy, the totemic Tory reform of the Eighties, will also be key, he says.
One possibility for inclusion in the Tory manifesto is a radical expansion of Right to Buy, Margaret Thatcher’s plan which gave council tenants the power to purchase their homes. Critics say it has cut the number of council houses available to the poor but senior Tories want the right to be extended to allow the sale of housing association properties. Mr Osborne does not rule it out.
“We will see going forward,” he says, although he is not ready to propose such a plan “right now”.
What about forcing councils to sell their most expensive properties in order to pay for cheaper housing?
“That’s something we have raised,” the Chancellor says. “I think councils do have to justify why it is they hold on to very expensive properties.”
PENSIONS REVOLUTION
Mr Osborne argues that his bold new home ownership targets fit with the party’s record of radical reforms intended to put more people in charge of their own assets.
From tomorrow, two million over-55s with a collective £140billion of pension savings will get unprecedented new freedoms to access their money and spend it as they wish.
Instead of being forced to buy annuities, which can offer poor value, they will be able to put the money towards other types of investment, such as buy-to-let homes.
Mr Osborne urges savers to “go and explore this new world” of control over their money on what has been labelled “pension freedom day”. “Many people will have assumed they have to buy an annuity,” Mr Osborne says. “That’s not the case anymore.” But he adds: “Take your time. You don’t have to make this decision today.”
DEATH AND TAXES
If the Tories win a majority, they have promised to cut taxes for the middle classes. They will raise the threshold at which people are drawn into the 40p higher rate of tax to £50,000, by 2020.
Mr Osborne, who is destined to stay as Chancellor if the Conservatives win, says he is keeping his “options open” about the timing of the tax cuts and could move sooner. “It will depend on individual decisions in individual budgets,” he says.
“We are absolutely committed to reaching that £50,000 threshold so you don’t have people on middle incomes increasingly sucked into the higher.”
Many Tories hope he will also revive his pre-2010 pledge to cut inheritance tax by raising the threshold at which estates become liable to £1million. “We want inheritance tax to be paid by the rich,” he says. “But I don’t want to say much more.”
THE ECONOMY
Throughout the interview, the Chancellor is careful not to raise expectations of pre-election “sweeteners”.
For Mr Osborne, who has been labelled “the austerity Chancellor”, the priority must always be tackling the deficit. This will require further painful cuts after the election.
For many Conservative MPs and traditionalist supporters, the biggest fear is that the Treasury axe will come down again on defence budgets. Mr Osborne offers some reassurance, promising to protect “regular” troop numbers. “I feel an absolute responsibility to make sure that the military has the resources to defend our country,” he says. “We are not people who want to leave our nation weak and defenceless.”
But the threats to the recovery are real. “The situation in the Eurozone remains very fragile,” Mr Osborne warns. Greece could end up leaving the euro “by accident or mishap”, and this would hurt Britain.
“But I think the biggest risk at the moment is very clearly the possibility of Ed Miliband in Downing St. The recovery is on the ballot paper on May 7 and if people vote for Ed Miliband in Downing St, the recovery will end.”
The prospect of a Labour government propped up by Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party “would be an unholy alliance between the people who want to break up the country and the people who want to bankrupt it”, he adds. Last week’s leaders’ debate showed that Mr Miliband would be “completely overshadowed” by Ms Sturgeon, he says.
THE ELECTION
Despite Mr Osborne’s warnings of the dire consequences of a Labour victory, the Tories are failing to take a clear lead in the polls – and time is dwindling.
The Chancellor insists that the party has seized the momentum and are “confident” of winning a majority. “I have done plenty of elections where there is a real air of defeatism,” says Mr Osborne, who worked on John Major’s doomed 1997 campaign. “I detect the opposite here.”
LEADERSHIP
What about his own future? Does the Chancellor agree with Mr Cameron that he would make a fine leader of the party and PM one day?
“I am his friend. I am his political ally. I am his Chancellor. I am fighting this election to make sure that David Cameron is the leader of this country for the next five years,” Mr Osborne says.
The question arises only because Mr Cameron named the Chancellor as a potential successor last month. Such talk first swirled around Mr Osborne after he switched to a famously tough but successful diet, which has left him looking years younger.
With just a month until polling day, Mr Osborne is spending the holiday weekend on the campaign trail. But he may permit himself a modest pre-election sweetener. “I’m sure I will be allowed one Easter egg,” he says.