From a Mark of Failure to an Opportunity for Self-Congratulation

Summary

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The Pre-Budget report is a curious event. It started out as an "autumn Budget" - a mark of failure by a Chancellor who had made a hash of his real Budget in the spring, or else been overtaken by events that made nonsense of his sums.

Chancellors tried not to have autumn Budgets. Then came the idea that if you had one every year, even when nothing much had gone wrong, it would cease to be embarrassing. Revisions to the arithmetic became routine.

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Extract

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From a Mark of Failure to an Opportunity for Self-Congratulation

Gordon Brown has turned the event into an occasion when, tucked away between lofty strategy and self-congratulation, he can catc...

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