Daily View: What can we expect in the Budget?
Commentators anticipate Chancellor Alistair Darling's Budget speech tomorrow and wonder about the effect on the election.
The Mr Darling not to be vague about how and where he would cut spending:
"The opposition parties should be alarmed by the government's lack of candour. Whoever wins this election will oversee the retreat of the state. If this happens without Britons having been given a choice about how it should occur - or even a warning - they will be justifiably enraged, so making the task even harder. Mr Darling's mission is to ground the election in reality."
the signs are that the Budget will lack revelations for a practical reason:
"Darling delivered his pre-Budget report only last December. In effect that was a Budget too, with tax rises and the increase in spending on education commanding most attention. Long ago pre-Budget reports became Budgets. So this will be Darling's second Budget in the space of three months. There are limits to what more he has to say, or do. He has little spare cash, if any, and the spending review has been postponed until after the election. Perhaps he should stand up and state: 'Read what I said in December. Thank you and good night'."
that the survival or demise of Labour is in Alistair Darling's hands:
"Mr Darling must pull the ultimate Budget rabbit from the hat by making a virtue of being boring and being broke. Impossible as this may seem, it would be unwise to underestimate Mr Darling. Once routinely trashed by the PM's spinners, and so close to defenestration that the removal vans were near to being despatched to No 11, the Chancellor has become his party's unlikely secret weapon."
Research Director at the Taxpayers' Alliance that we need to understand how spending will be cut:
"[A] clear statement about what is coming is most important as the parties need to start working to win a public mandate for cuts. Unfortunately, clarity about what the country faces over the next decade is one thing that no one really expects in the Chancellor's speech."
that news that the public-sector borrowing was £10bn less than expected and the election looming large may lead to some giveaways:
"A couple of sweeteners - perhaps aimed at lower income groups may not be out of the question. After all it is (almost) Easter. But financial constraints mean now is probably not the time to produce a pre-election bunny out of the hat."
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