Over to you, Dave

David Cameron is always at his best on budget day. This week his response was mocking. He dismissed as nonsensical the projections and figures which Alistair Darling gave to the House. And rightly so: it was the usual mixture of fairytale economics. But it was in keeping with Gordon Brown’s budgets — creative accounting applied to a nation, with cataclysmic results.

It is almost funny to hear Mr Darling talk about the fact that the government overspend will be £167 billion this year rather than £178 billion. Both figures represent a monumental failure of the policy adopted by the government. Our national debt will rise from £617 billion last year to £1,400 billion in 2014-15 — and the Chancellor had the audacity to describe this as ‘halving of borrowing’. Having run out of a statistical means of concealing debt, he is using verbal trickery. The annual increase in debt may halve over the four years, but the burden government places on taxpayers will more than double.

It is tragic — yet typical — that the loudest cheers from the Labour benches on budget day came not in response to fiscal plans but from blatant Tory bashing. Agreeing an ‘information exchange’ deal with Belize was intended to swing the spotlight on Lord Ashcroft. The 50p tax, to be introduced next month, is intended to embarrass the Conservatives. Almost every move in this and previous budgets is intended not as a means of serving the country but as a piece of hate mail directed at Notting Hill. It is partisan politics at its very worst, a war that leaves voters in the crossfire.

Having said this, Mr Darling is to be commended for the subdued tone of the Budget overall. There were no pre-election gizmos to dazzle voters with because, as the Chancellor knows, they would not have been believed.