Crunch budget meeting slips to Monday

It sounds like the Quad didn’t manage to slam shut the Budget box tonight. Diaries are being cleared for Monday when the PM, Chancellor, DPM and Chief Secretary will have to get round the table again. In between now and then Nick Clegg will be busy with his Spring Conference and then on Tuesday the PM is off to the US.

There is quite a lot still to do it seems and the discussions in the room don’t always bear a strong resemblance to some of the speculation outside it. The danger for the government is that it underwhelms, looks like it has just been plopping little weights on the scales to tilt the effects not transform the economy. The FT’s superb Chris Giles has a fore-shadowing here of exactly the sort of day-after Budget coverage the Chancellor is struggling to avoid.

Follow @GaryGibbonBlog on Twitter