As we said earlier, the Observer political team is busy sifting through the Budget aftermath. But Gaby Hinsliff, Political Editor, did send us a quick email despatch from the front line with some early thoughts on what happened:
My initial take is that whenever the Treasury says in advance of a budget that it's not going to be a cynically political pre-election giveaway but a steady-as-she-goes budget etc., it's usually a dead cert that in fact it's going to be the former, and they're just trying to make it look statesmanlike.
The carpet now appears to be littered with shot Tory foxes (pensioner council tax discount, stamp duty cuts, etc. have now become the property of G Brown rather than M Howard), and Oliver Letwin is left with a rather harder job of totting up the figures and producing some real surprises for the campaign.
It is an absolutely political budget, which probably explains the rather sickly expressions on a number of Blairite cabinet ministers while Gordon was speaking, and the tensions at the weekend (as we reported) about who should get the credit for the most crowd-pleasing bits: Gordon has just delivered what labour needs to neutralise the Tories.
Also worth noting, in terms of who may be Chancellor after the election, some potentially more unpopular things poised to kick in: petrol duty for example is not frozen, but the decision left to September; long-term reform of pensions is post-election only.
