The news is scarcely sweet, so best keep it short. Richard Lambert, the former Financial Times editor who looks after the bosses as head of the CBI, says six brief paragraphs are all we need from Alistair Darling’s Budget next week. Such brevity, he adds, would win the chancellor the “love and admiration” of the British people.

Mr Lambert, always a kindly soul, is probably overgenerous in that estimation. The basic sentiment, though, is right. First Budgets are too often seen as a chance for a new chancellor to show off. Mr Darling has nothing, as it were, to show.