UK Pre-Budget 2005 - Comment & analysis
Resources
Martin Wolf: Chancellor risks tarnishing his legacy
Gordon Brown is on thinning ice. Labour has used up all – probably more than all – of its margin of fiscal manoeuvre. It must now face painful choices.
Philip Stephens: Brown’s largesse to Cameron
The chancellor, more impatient by the day to swap the Treasury for the premiership, was drawing afresh the political dividing lines between left and right.
Jonathan Guthrie: Bad Santa brings paltry gifts
The chancellor slapped one windfall tax on energy companies, proposed another for landowners and jacked up the costs of small businesses.
James Blitz: Making a virtue out of failing growth
While the chancellor swiftly acknowledged that growth would come in at half the rate he predicted in March, he embellished this fact with an argument that almost seemed to make a virtue out of the current economic slowdown.
Robert Shrimsley: Man enough not to say sorry
The public warms to someone who is big enough to admit he is not perfect. Monday was that day for Gordon Brown, and so the chancellor strode manfully into the Commons chamber and did...no such thing.
Ask the experts: Pre-Budget report
FT journalists Robert Budden, Chris Giles and Vanessa Houlder answer your questions on the PBR.
