Wednesday, March 12, 2008

A difficult budget

Alistair Darling will present his first budget today. We already know it is going to be a bit of a dogs breakfast, because of the hurriedly announced measures in the pre budget report to "shoot the Tory fox" have been found out. They neither shoot the Conservative foxes, nor do they answer the questions the Conservative policies proffered.

However, it goes deeper.

This budget will be the most difficult since 1997, when Labour came to power. It will in fact be worse than that and probably be the worst since 1991.

Labour inherited an economy in good shape, with good prospects, but has squandered that.

I have no doubt there will be rabbits from the hat, but once on the plate and examined there will not be much meat there. Instead expect the chancellor to dodge the golden rules by moving the goal posts.

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