God that was dull. Where was the stirring rhetoric, the grand gesture, the bold decision making?

What a disappointment. When the big news is that Bingo duty is coming down by 2% and that there is to be a boiler scrappage scheme next year, you know that not much has happened in the PBR. I’ve just watched the Chancellor’s speech in its entirety (well, as much as my struggling web connection would allow) and I am afraid to say I’m not sure it was worth the 45minutes of my time it took up.

For an event that had the potential to be one of the more seismic economic policy announcements of the 21st Century, it was about as much fun as doing your tax return. And rather less rewarding. Where was the stirring rhetoric, the grand gesture, the bold decision making?

Instead of a great vision for national economic rehabilitation, complete with the necessary-but-painful big cuts in public sector spending which we all know are on the way, what we got was a sort of steady-as-she-goes exercise in treading fiscal water.

OK the banks are going to have to pay 50% tax on bonuses, but we knew that was coming anyway thanks to Robert Peston, et al. And NI is going up again, too, and there will be a cap on public sector pay-rises of 1%.  All very sensible, but no sign of anything on a scale that seems anywhere near large enough to deal with the mess that our economy is in right now.

I should have know better of course – high drama has never been Darling’s style, and there is the little matter of a general election on the way. What’s the point in making a Churchillian appeal of the ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat’ variety, when by doing so you stand a good chance of putting yourself and your cabinet colleagues out of a job? What politician wouldn’t choose to have a worse mess of their own making to clear up in six months time, rather than having risked handing power on a plate to the other side by trying to fix things now?

Darling’s professed reasoning is that it remains too soon to start slashing public spending; that doing so would damage our chances of recovery more seriously than adding yet more zeroes onto the already scary string of digits that is the PSBR.

He did drop a few hints that the worst may be yet to come – debt as a proportion of GDP will peak at nearly 80%, he says, and not until 2015 – but on the whole this was an exercise in marking time. Time that by the end of next year, may end up looking like it’s been wasted.

If you want my tip, buy shares in boiler-makers. At least they ought to do well.