With Brown’s G20 agenda looking less globe-shattering, and more shattered, by the minute, Andrew Grice – writing in the New Statesman – reveals that the PM now regards the Budget as a more likely stage for any “political fightback”:
“Close allies insist that Brown will focus on the domestic agenda once the G20 show is over, and that he knows the Budget on 22 April will be much more important to his chances of staging another political fightback. ‘He has not staked all his chips on a one-day summit,’ one said. ‘He will move on quickly. He has still got a lot of chips left.'”
Still got a lot of chips left, has he? Brown and his allies would do well to remember that – as I pointed out a few weeks ago, and as Anthony Wells kindly backed up with a more detailed analysis – recent Budgets haven’t tended to deliver a boost for the government.
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