Gordon Brown is leaving the building. That much was clear from a pre-Budget speech that marked the chancellor’s growing disengagement from micro-managing businesses and his growing interest in micro-managing the lives of ordinary Britons.

As ever, Mr Brown’s rhetoric advanced as remorselessly as a column of army ants that overwhelms through sheer weight of numbers. But there was an air of demob happiness to the chancellor, even when scaring Britons with the challenge of competing with China and India.