In a bold, seemingly unselfish move - George Gideon Oliver Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer and co-incidentally the 21st great grandson of King Henry III, promised to scrap inheritance tax: ‘I know what it is like to live with the uncertainty of just how many peerages I would one day inherit. With nothing but the monogrammed shirt on my back, I stand resolutely for the common people, as my father did and as his father, before him - the 16th Baronet of Ballentaylor.
‘If you’ve inherited chunks of Ireland – like the itsy bitsy County of Waterford - you should be able to keep it – particular if it was as recently as 1620. It needs to stay in the family, along with our receding chin, a penchant for ermine robes and a growing conviction that the Normans had the right idea.’
