Mr Deputy Speaker:
Stability the foundation.
Investment not cuts.
Every child the best start in life.

I think I missed something early on in Mr Brown’s speech… What’s the new tax rate on verbs? Must be pretty high if even the government’s having trouble affording them.

There’s little in the speech itself to disagree with – there rarely is in a pre-election budget, I expect. I just wonder how he can manage to announce tax cuts, borrowing cuts, and yet massive spending increases. I’m no expert on the economy, but to me that says ‘tax rises after the election’.

The main message that I took away from today’s events was how much better Mr Brown would be as Labour’s leader: Tony Blair’s fake emotion and anger versus Mr Brown’s real commandeering and forceful delivery, appearing to actually believe what he says? I know who I’d choose.

Overall, not a fantastic day for Labour, but not a bad one either. A couple of days of positive reports in the newspapers might give them a bit of a boost, but I think lots of the tabloid press will instead concentrate on picking holes and making Labour look bad.

So all-in-all it’s probably been a pretty neutral day. Not exactly what Labour needed right now, but not so bad that it makes Mr Brown look bad… probably a reasonably good day for him personally.