A reasonable government pre­sents multi-year fiscal plans on an annual basis, list­ing  planned expenditures, projected tax receipts and the changes in the allocation of public spending and in the tax code. But, under normal circumstances, a benevolent government will not have much new to say on the fiscal front after its first year in office.

Gordon Brown, when he was chancellor, however, was a manic micro-tinkerer. His annual Budgets were full of new and recycled measures, introduced with little apparent attention to their effect on incentives or income distribution or to how they would interact with the existing jumble of tax schemes, benefit schedules and entitlement rules. This has left the UK with probably the most complex tax and benefit system in the known universe, one whose overall impact on incentives and distribution is incomprehensible but no doubt perverse.