For once, Osborne will be glad not to be the story

A few years ago George Osborne would have bristled at the idea that one of his budgets wouldn’t be the biggest event of the political week. His ability to conjure rabbits out of hats had already prevented electoral defeat for the Tories once (his 2007 inheritance tax pledge, now consigned to history, scared Gordon Brown out of calling an election he would have won).

But this week a low-key Budget was just what Osborne wanted — and delivered. One imagines, though, that he can’t be happy with the careless way that Downing Street managed to alienate almost the entire press just 72 hours before he got up to deliver it.

I understand that an inquest is now under way at No. 10 into who allowed Oliver Letwin to wander off by himself and negotiate press regulation in Ed Miliband’s office in the wee hours of Monday morning.

The Chancellor wanted to avoid a repeat of last year’s Budget troubles: this year’s statement was free of the pernickety measures littered throughout last year’s.