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George Osborne, Mansion House speech; ENGLAND: London: Mansion House: INT George Osborne MP (Chancellor of the Exchequer) speech SOT - My Lord Mayor, ladies and gentlemen. It is humbling to speak here tonight conscious of the long line of distinguished Chancellors who have preceded me. I have been looking back at some of their speeches for inspiration, and was particularly struck by what Austen Chamberlain said here at the Mansion House: "Lord Mayor, the lot of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not altogether a happy one. He has few friends, and the few he has are those of whom he should most beware, for their approach is the most insidious, and their indignation if he refused their claims is the most marked and the most violent." Then I realised that he was the Chancellor in the last Liberal Conservative coalition. Of course some have made comparisons with another former Chancellor, Lord Randolph Churchill, who took office in 1886 when he was 37 years old. But he offered his resignation to his Prime Minister just four months into the job. To his shock and surprise it was accepted. That's not a mistake I'm planning to repeat. So rather than quoting Randolph Churchill, I'd like to begin with the words of his rather more successful son Winston. For it was here at the Mansion House that he delivered one of his most famous lines: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." He was talking to a country weary from three long years of war. But his words could be said of the current situation as we approach the third anniversary of the beginning of the financial crisis. So difficult has the economic situation been, so sharp has been the fall in output, so large have been the bailouts, that the cry has gone out: this time is different. If only it were as simple as that. For there is a well trodden path that has led, in different times of history and different places i...