Whether [people] run their own business, work for a business, go out there, pay their taxes and see the money wasted, fed up with the money going to the next door neighbor sitting permanently on out of work benefits. There needs to be a coalition of change.

Believe me, I understand that most higher rate taxpayers are not the super-rich.

There is a big problem. The problem is the country borrowed too much. We went on a borrowing binge, there was a housing boom. You want to help people de-leverage and deal with those debts over time.

Put on top of that the fact that the whole world is looking at Britain and saying how is this country going to pay its way in the future. They are looking at other countries like Greece who can't pay their way in the future and you see savage spending cuts, big cuts in pay.

Well you know I've attracted a lot of criticism by, for example, suggesting that child benefit should be taken away from higher rate taxpaying families.

Britain is not part of the single currency. That is a decision we have taken, a voluntary decision of this country, but as a result are part of a European Union 19 of whose members are rapidly integrating, creating political, fiscal, monetary, economic union to make their currency work. And that is increasingly rubbing up against the operation.

No other chancellor in the long history of the office has felt the need to pass a law in order to convince people he has the political will to implement his own Budget.