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Alistair Darling may not choose to highlight the fact, but the Chancellor of recent times whom he most resembles is not Gordon Brown but Norman Lamont.
Like Lord Lamont, Darling has come to the office because his predecessor had moved next door to become Prime Minister. Like Lamont (who followed John Major), it has quickly become obvious that the previous incumbents left at the right time - for them.
At the beginning of the 1990s, as now, the most difficult challenge was the weakness of the public finances - the fact that government has committed to spend much more than it can raise in tax, and has to borrow the difference. But it is the third similarity that is potentially most alarming. Lamont arrived as the economy plunged toward recession, and the result was a catastrophic fall in tax revenue at a time when demands on the public purse, in terms of unemployment benefit and social security, went through the roof.
He had the impossible task of trying to increase tax revenues just as the economy went into freefall. Darling, too, arrives at a time of uncertainty. The credit crunch could hit the UK hard as it feeds through into the wider economy, starving business of the money it needs to expand and eating at the foundations of the house-price boom.
This is the underlying and unshakable reality, regardless of the rosy glow conveyed by his speech introducing today's Pre-Budget Report and the longer-term plans in the Comprehensive Spending Review. Underneath the illusion of tax reductions and tinkering, the imposition of higher green taxes and hints of how to get more money from privateequity partners and non-domiciled residents lie three uncomfortable truths.
First, the growth rate for the UK economy forecast by the Treasury today is lower than it was six months ago. But it may yet not be low enough, if privatesector economists in the City are to be believed. So the question is, can we get through the next 12 months without a sharp rise in unemployment and the distress that will bring to a heavily mortgaged and indebted population?
The second big issue - no pun intended - is Government borrowing. Nothing strikes more keenly at the core of Brown's claim to have been a responsible and prudent holder of the Chancellor's office than the fact that after 10 years of growth (15 if you include the previous period under the Conservatives), the Government is still spending more than it gets in taxes. At this stage in the cycle, the public finances should be strongly in surplus, so there is a buffer to mitigate the effects of a Lamont-style slowdown.
But Brown consistently underestimated the amount Government would have to borrow, and clouded the picture with overblown claims for savings to be made from efficiencies and job cuts in the civil service - which is another way of saying he liked to spend the money before he or the country had earned it. Darling may be trying to distance himself from the golden rules by which his predecessor set so much store, but the concern in the City is again the underlying reality, not the gloss.
Independent economists would like to be able to agree with the Chancellor's prediction of when we might see a return to balanced budgets. But they just can't make his figures add up.
All these things are interlinked, which is why the third big concern is tax revenue. The reluctance of voters to accept an increase in the headline rates of tax gave rise to the stealth-tax phenomenon and a loading of tax on the corporate sector - but both have gone as far as they can without a revolt. In addition, corporation tax yields are plunging - in part because so many big companies have been taken over by foreign firms that can arrange to make profits in lower-tax jurisdictions, and in part because so much comes from the City and there is no plan B for when, as now, it hits a bad patch. City bonuses and house sales are down and VAT is flat because people are getting nervous and saving more.
On one level, it is all too much detail. What has been missing in recent times from political life is intelligent debate about the big picture. There is endless sparring about £3 billion of tax cuts here or £5 billion there, but in fact neither number matters much.
The Government collects well over £500 billion a year in taxes, more than 40p of every pound earned. A debate about whether that is too much or too little, and serious discussion about how we might be sure that what is collected is well spent, would give some purpose to the Budget discussion.
