Borrowed time

How much better it might have been if Alistair Darling had heeded the advice of the director-general of the CBI, Richard Lambert, and kept his first budget speech to no more than six simple paragraphs. On a day that began with news that central banks around the world had just pumped £100 billion of emergency liquidity into the banking system in order to stave off the untold economic damage that might result from paralysis of the financial system, the British public was looking to the Chancellor for basic competence, frankness and a touch of humility — rather than the boastfulness, deceit and refusal to admit failings that characterised his predecessor’s Budgets. In the absence of a full catalogue of tricksy new taxes and benefits to be announced in the Gordon Brown manner, brevity, matched by firmness of tone, would have been welcome.

But sadly neither was apparent. There was no sting in the tail, no rabbit out of the hat, not a single rhetorical flourish or attempt at a joke.