The pre-budget report is like an unfinished painting
What we got yesterday felt like one of those unfinished paintings by a master that you sometimes see in the great galleries – there are pencil lines, some dabs of paint but a lot of canvas is bare.
Labour MPs have been saying for the last few weeks that the Tory gloom and doom message was helping to firm up some Labour votes (not enough to stop them losing the election, they say, but potentially enough to get into hung parliament territory).
The task Alistair Darling seemed to have devised for himself was to look like he “gets it” on the deficit while preserving dividing lines between Labour and the Conservatives.
Here’s a test on this: when you heard George Osborne come on the airwaves this morning and say it’s going to be horrible whoever gets in (I paraphrase), did he sound more or less credible than he did 24 hours ago?
I’m told that he believes that every step Labour takes away from the clear “cuts versus investment” dividing lines that Gordon Brown had to abandon months ago, gives the Tories’ central argument more credibility.
Labour is busily drawing attention to the different approaches – 2 per cent of the population shouldering more than half of the additional tax burden (Channel 4 FactCheck will be testing that one out later in the day if you want to keep an eye on their page).
We get the IFS analysis at lunchtime, which normally produces a couple of things the government didn’t necessarily want to see in lights when the PBR was written.
Meanwhile, I hear that tent pegs were hammered in overnight at a refugee centre for disenchanted emigre bankers being set up on the shores of Lake Zug. Or not.
You get a strong impression talking to Treasury sources that they expect a lot of “leakage” on the bankers’ bonus and the £550m tax take estimate is a pretty fluid one.
Related: Straightforward approach through raid on bankers’ bonuses
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