Budget 2010 blog: Wonderful dressing, Darling

Notes from the Budget: Alistair Darling does it very well. I’ve sat through many, and he delivers clearly, directly, smoothly.

He's not pompous, or fumbling. There are no stagey props like glasses of Scotch or Pennine water nearby, for grandstanding. It was neither too long, nor too short. He's more like an accountant than a politician, and that is a compliment.

However, it was probably the most political Budget in years. Nothing that could be of any use to the Opposition or the electorate was given away, and other people's good ideas were shamelessly morphed into Labour creations. It was heavy on global macro economic explanation (‘It's not our fault, everyone has suffered', and ‘We are doing better than our peers in the G7/EU/G20'), aimed at deflecting responsibility. But it was light on the detail everyone wanted: how is the government going to cut spending?

Brilliantly, there was plenty for the upcoming election trail: banker-bashing aplenty, boosts for first time house buyers, those on housing benefits, car drivers, the unemployed, pensioners, those close to retirement, those with children, mortgagees, savers (Note: the increased ISA allowance is index linked. They know inflation is coming down the line.) The expected fuel tax rises have been staggered, local roads shall be repaired, creative people are valued, and so are technical people, and so are teenagers! We love you all, good people. (Except cider drinkers, obviously.)

Darling is nothing if not true to Labour principles: higher taxation, greater spending and a real commitment to redistribution of wealth. The tricky bit came when he started asking - no, declaring - that the private sector, and especially the financial sector he had just been rubbishing, was to be the valued partner in several of his new schemes. The ultra-trendy £2bn Green bank, for example, plus his proposed New Growth Capital Fund and his infrastructure projects, all capped by a shiny new quango, UK Finance for Growth.

Like a clever teacher trying to co-opt the brighter and more disruptive pupils, he wants those on the naughty step -- the bankers, financiers and wealthy people generally - to do his job for him and bail the country out of the hole it sits in. Then just as we were thinking it was all over - there was a discernible change of tone, like background film music that flags the finale, for the coup de grace.

This was a killer. While the Conservative Party and its deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft have been flannelling the non-dom issue for weeks, some Treasury wonk has managed to lean on poor little Dominica, Grenada and Belize to secure a Tax Information Agreement with each offshore jurisdiction. You could almost feel the punch to the Opposition front bench guts at the silky announcement, which preceded some benevolent concession on pre-school places and pensioner poverty.

David Cameron's Budget response was, in comparison, rather garbled and belligerent. No new lines: the Chancellor was exaggerating the positive economic forecast figures, touting old measures as new ones and was hoping the next government would clean up the mess he had left. (We know that.) He couldn't, he said, think of any question to which the answer could be: "Five more years of Labour government please". (Nor can we, but we still need a credible alternative.)

Darling sat impassive at the rant. With the Belize Budget, he has played a blinder and he knows it. Cameron is not fighting Gordon Brown for the top job: he's facing Darling.