The most significant big-picture take on this year’s Budget came before it was delivered, from the New Statesman’s Will Dunn: we would be a better-run, less hysterical political economy without Budgets at all – without the whole pompous, theatrical palaver, with its implausible, not-worth-the-paper predictions and shrill, mean-minded playground politics.

Will’s right. When you need to introduce a new tax, bring forward the legislation. When you need to rethink some aspect of public spending, do it in your own time at the appropriate moment. But let’s stop pretending the economic course of the nation is usefully set by a single charabanc trip to the circus.

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