The trouble with taxing rich: there aren’t many of them...

That would never work today. In New Labour Britain it is almost impossible to find any part of the Chancellor's performance which had not already been floated in the newspapers, tested on focus groups and generally kicked around by the watching army of economists in the City and elsewhere.

It has become a media event stripped of the essential quality of novelty or surprise. Thus as expected he announced measures to help train the young unemployed to get useful job skills. He delivered on measures to help the housing market by extending the stamp duty holiday, increasing mortgage availability and reducing the number of repossessions when people lose their jobs.

He helped company cash flow by making tax relief for losses more quickly available, he bought into Lord Mandelson's scheme for £2,000 assistance for trading in old cars, he announced more incentives to squeeze out the last drops of North Sea oil, further incentives for off-shore wind farms and curbs on carbon emissions as a way of promoting green technologies.

On the negative side, he flagged a move from 2011 to restrict tax relief on pension contributions for people earning £150,000, and in the one main surprise package, a new 50 per cent tax band from next year for those earning above that figure.

So we shall soon see how mobile the high earners really are. Not as much as they pretend, one suspects.

Chancellor Alastair Darling at least puts the bad news in the speech, whereas his predecessor Gordon Brown used regularly only to flag the good bits. Darling , perhaps of necessity, has taken the view that after a year of banking bailouts, financial disasters and a slowdown unprecedented in its speed and severity given that the world economy will contract this year for the first time since the Second World War, there is little left to hide. He also reminded us that even in these dark hours there is still reason to hope. The world economy is expected to double in the next two decades and Britain should get its slice.

The fiscal stimulus, lower interest rates, falling inflation, cheaper sterling and other measures must deliver some benefits soon. He says these should protect at least half a million jobs, thereby slowing the rise in unemployment —which would otherwise soar given that he expects overall that output will drop 3.6 per cent in the year as a whole.

Perhaps the really bad times may not last much longer. In a comment which makes himself a hostage to fortune, he predicted that things will begin to get better here by the end of this year, and to hoots of derision from the Tories, he added that the bounce in 2011 will see growth of 3.5 per cent. We shall see.

However, it is not the stimulative measures by which this Budget will be judged, but by what Darling said about our debt-laden future. This year the deficit will be a shocking £173 billion, and only fractionally less next year. Indeed it will not fall below £100 million until 2013-14. And though he did not say so, even that immodest target will only be met if growth does rebound as strongly as he says it will the year after next. If it does not, then we really will be in a mess.

But he was frighteningly vague about where any extra tax revenue would come from. Making the rich pay up may be popular but there are not enough of them to raise the billions he needs. And where were the public spending cuts?

Darling says you have to grow out of recession, not cut your way out. But it is not a good sign when you have to borrow as much as we do just to stay afloat. What this actually underlines though was the emptiness at the heart of today's speech. Darling has in fact come up with very little to help, ­ not because he is stupid, but because there is very little he can do. The real message for voters from today is that when it comes to surviving the next two years, they are on their own.

Budget Box

The longest Budget speech was four hours, 45 minutes by William Gladstone in 1853.

The shortest was by Benjamin Disraeli in 1867 at 45 minutes.

Parliamentary reporter Sir Alexander Mackintosh sat through 60 Budgets, from 1881 to 1941. His verdict was: "Speeches get shorter as figures get bigger."