Short-term fixes while real woes get worse

It is not just the content, it is the tone. Budgets used to be an attempt at a genuine review of the financial state of the nation, the trends in the global economy and the way the government was going to raise and spend its money for the next 12 months. But not any more. Today they are just another instalment in the party political game.

Politicians nowadays seem to inhabit a world where the primary objective is to get through the day, and a good result is a favourable headline in tomorrow's paper. Nothing else seems to matter.

Thus hours are wasted by one side or another putting forward a minor proposal - the so-called reform of inheritance tax being the latest example - which is then rubbished by the other side as being fiscally irresponsible or not costed properly.

There is endless squabbling about £2 billion here, £3 billion there , and a £5 billion black hole somewhere else, in a cynical attempt to persuade the public that it matters.

The reality is it does not matter at all. Sums of this magnitude make almost no difference. What matters is that the total tax and spend by the Government this year will be £550 billion, which is near enough 40p of every £1 earned in the country and almost exactly double the £270 billion it was when Labour came to power 10 years ago. Some of that increase is inflation, a lot of it is just increased tax.

What is really insulting, and at last is making people really angry, is the assumption of the politicians that we will be so distracted by these pseudogiveaways, these tax baubles and bits of glittery financial tinsel that we won't notice the reality underneath.

Having said that, the most depressing thing about David Cameron's Conservatives is that they are inclined to do the same thing. Everything is for the moment, bereft of core belief or principle.

Listening to the speech on Tuesday, one could only conclude that Britain has two economies. The first is the one talked about by Gordon Brown, and now Darling - the one with more or less the lowest interest rates for 50 years, the lowest inflation for 20 years, with 60 successive quarters without a recession, the fastest growth rate of any mature economy, the best record in Europe for job creation and where you can't walk down the street without bumping into a Nobel Prize winner.

The other economy is the one the rest of us inhabit, where there is a yawning balance of payments deficit that is living testament to our inability to pay our way in the world day by day, so we have to sell everything, including probably Sainsbury's, to foreign buyers. Where the roads, railways and airports are overloaded, crumbling and increasingly Third World in their standards.

Where almost a quarter of children leave school barely able to read or write. Where the public finances are stretched to the limit and government borrowing regularly hits new records. Where individuals are stuck in a mountain of debt, and where the burden of personal and business taxation has been raised to the point where there is almost nothing left to squeeze.

We have a consumer-driven economy that is geared to instant gratification of largely invented needs.

What this week's Pre-Budget Report also made starkly obvious is that we also now have consumer-driven politics. It is all about instant gratification in a world crying out for coherent long term vision.