It is hard not to feel a bit sorry for Michael Howard. The leader of the opposition is a fine parliamentary skirmisher. But Gordon Brown has all the heavy ammunition: a record-breaking economy, a tolerable fiscal position and an ability to hit one target after another with carefully aimed programmes, policies and promises. This was not an exciting Budget. But a well-governed country should not expect one. It was, instead, a Budget from a chancellor who knows what he is doing and why. Above all, as long as the economy continues to work so well, the opposition is doomed to struggle.

Politically, the Budget was quite shrewd, given the tight limits on what the chancellor could do while remaining within his fiscal limits. In essence, a raid of £1.1bn on the profitable and unpopular oil companies financed an £800m one-off council tax refund this year to those enthusiastic voters, the over-65s. Subsequently, the big changes are the uprating of child tax credit in line with earnings, at a cost of £480m by 2007-08, and free local off-peak bus travel for pensioners, at a cost of £440m in the same year.