The man was the message. Alistair Darling, the chancellor mocked for being dull and grey and lacking charisma delivered a Budget which was, well, a wee bit dull and grey and lacking anything very much to get political pulses racing. That, though, was the point. Indeed, it had been the advance billing from the Treasury.
That is why Mr Darling dubbed his own statement "the responsible Budget". That is why he repeatedly pledged to maintain "stability".
Starved of funds and still paying the price for producing too many rabbits from his hat in last year's pre-Budget Report, Mr Darling posed today as the unflashy man who you can trust to maintain a steady course as fierce global economic winds batter Britain.
The chancellor did, however, make two big choices today - one political, one economic.
First he dared to force people to "think before they drink before they drive" - by raising taxes on alcohol and cars to pay for a renewed effort to cut child poverty and to subsidise pensioners soaring fuel bills.
His second choice was, you might think, rather out of character - to gamble that Britain's economy will weather the storms and that the country's soaring borrowing will eventually take care of itself.
A little noticed announcement in the Budget today indicated that all long-term recipients of incapacity benefit will have to undergo new tougher medical tests - called work capability assessments. The tests are designed to ensure that more IB claimants return to work and have already been introduced for new claimants.
The chancellor said today that the tests for existing claimants would begin in 2010. He was adopting an idea first proposed by David Freud, the investment banker who's advised ministers on welfare reform, and which is already Conservative party policy.
This move will allow Labour to claim that the Tories will not be able to make any savings from a more radical approach to welfare and, therefore, that their public spending plans don't add up. That's why James Purnell is the minister being put up to open the Commons Budget debate. He's likely to ask two questions of the Tories - would you spend the money we're spending on cutting child poverty and, if so, where will you get the money from since you won't make any savings on welfare and you've already promised much more than you can afford?
If you're a binge drinker you've got one more weekend to do it before it hurts your wallet as well as your liver. Beer's up 4p a pint, wine 14p a bottle and spirits 55p but not till this Sunday. So, as predicted, booze and gas guzzlers are paying to help poorer families and pensioners struggling to pay their fuel bills.
Overall this Budget ensured that heavy drinkers will get a financial hangover whilst promising that the British economy need not suffer one even as the world does.
The chancellor’s announced not a tax on plastic bags but the threat of a new law which could force supermarkets to charge for them if they don't do enough to cut their use. We don't need to wait for the Daily Mail headline proclaiming victory - they were given the story yesterday. How long can it be before it's "Arise Lord Dacre."
The clearest sign of how tight the public finances are is the small sums the chancellor's announcing. A few tens of millions of pounds may sound a lot but in Treasury terms they're a spare fiver and that's the sort of sum he's announced for many of his measures.
The big exception is measures to tackle child poverty costing around three quarters of a billion pounds. A lot but a fraction of the estimated £3.4bn required to get the government back on course for its target. We will soon discover how much new cars, pints of beer and bottles of wine and spirits will go up to pay for that.
Changes to benefit rules (to allow people to earn more before they lose housing and council tax benefit) together with increases to child benefit and child tax credit are designed to get the government back on course to meet their target to halve child poverty by 2010.
….The chancellor comparing every one of his own revised forecasts - for growth, borrowing and debt - with those under the last Tory government. His message - it maybe tough this year but nothing like as bad as ….
We've just had the first small surprise of the Budget - the chancellor's increasing petrol duty in 2010 above that already announced for "environmental reasons". He announced this while confirming that the 2p duty rise this year will be postponed for six months.
"We are better placed than other economies to withstand the global economic slowdown". That is the key claim at the heart of Alistair Darling's budget today. He boasted at the top of his speech that the economy will grow this year and next - not much of a boast.
What you'll see is what you'll get. That's the message coming from the Treasury this morning. They insist that even after the experts have thumbed through the Red Book of figures and forecasts and got their calculators out they will not find a hidden tax rise. So what can you expect from the man who has no money to give away and dare not raise much in taxes?
I'll try to sum it up in a sentence : Booze and gas guzzlers pay to cut child and fuel poverty.
It's official. A Treasury official tells the FT that "this is not the time for a pulse racing budget". This, they did not add, is hardly the chancellor to deliver a pulse racing budget. That though may, curiously, help Alistair Darling on a day when he wishes to reconnect his name with the phrase "safe pair of hands".
After the groans and jeers that followed his "Anything you can do I can do better" Pre-Budget Report (not to mention Gordon Brown's last "2p or not 2p" budget) last year, Darling is promising that this time there'll be no rabbits pulled from hats and no pyrotechnics.
What can you expect instead? Much talk of the charting a steady course through stormy global waters. Mr Darling's told colleagues at the Treasury about a visit to his Edinburgh supermarket when he heard two old ladies talking about the "sub prime crisis". His aim today is to make sure that when people worry about the squeeze in their finances or their falling house price or whether there'll be a recession that they're talking about that and not about a government that got good headlines on budget day only to see them unravel a day or two later.
UPDATE, 08:55: We now know the title of today's Budget and it sure ain't catchy. It's "Stability and Opportunity - building a strong sustainable future". Earlier in the week I set out my idea for a title. Can you do better?
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