Nick Goodway: What to expect from George Osborne in Budget 2016

Hamstrung as he is by the referendum, George Osborne’s eighth Budget, a week tomorrow, will be neither a political masterstroke nor a financial conjuring trick.

The reaction to his pension reforms told us that. Don’t do anything to scare the horses just now, George. But you can do what you like in the Autumn statement.

So among the morass of tax-avoidance doors slamming after horses have bolted and tweaks to research and development capital spending allowances, here are a couple of nailed-on announcements Osborne will make.

First up, the Chancellor will announce that the retail offer of shares in Lloyds Banking Group is back on. Anyone who took my advice five weeks ago and bought Lloyds shares at 63p may have had a bit of a squeaky-bum moment when they hit 52p in the great banking shares rout of mid-February. But now they are back at 73p and you are sitting pretty.

So too is Osborne, for that is the magic number at which he can again sell off taxpayers’ shares in Lloyds and show a profit. The Treasury still owns around £4.7 billion worth of Lloyds shares and Osborne has earmarked “at least £2 billion” of that for the great public sell-off. All he needs to do is fire the starting gun again.