Cicero Pre-Budget Report and Comprehensive Spending Review Analysis

Iain Anderson, Director and Chief Corporate Counsel at Cicero Consulting comments:

Well it was short and sweet! In fact one of the shortest Budget or PBR speeches for quite some time.So I will keep this short and to the point to match! Perhaps the speech was shorter than planned after being hastily re-written over the weekend.

The Prime Minister's decision to abandon an early General Election may well have resulted in the stripping out of much of the policy detail in the PBR and CSR which might have been the launch pad for a poll.

If only the Chancellor could turn the clock back a week, it would have been very interesting to see just what the speech might have looked like.

Very different and perhaps somewhat longer might be the answer.

Alastair Darling's first Budget speech was typically workmanlike - for that is his style.

One could hardly say there was anything eye-catching in the statement beyond the obvious attack on the new Tory policies and the change in capital gains tax.

Beyond the Comprehensive Spending Review commitments, which were pretty much as expected, there is no doubt that the Chancellor was forced into addressing the IHT issue as a result of the dramatic effect on electoral fortunes since the Tories unveiled their package in Blackpool last week.

While his decision to raise the IHT threshold up to £700,000 allied to his changes to the 'non-dom' regime allowed the Chancellor to answer the Tory tactic, the question remains just how effective the politics of all this will be.

The BIG question will always remain of the PBR 2007 - will the electorate regard this as a political turning point? For Alastair Darling - a case of what might have been! Iain Anderson is Director and Chief Corporate Counsel at Cicero Consulting.

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