What a finale! There was the chancellor, doing his usual Budget round-up. Commending his Budget to the house and so on when he allowed himself one last announcement. He had already pulled the rug from under the Tories' corporation tax cut  by announcing one of his own. And then, with a final flourish, he said he would cut the basic rate of income by 2p.

It was a sublime political move, wrong-fotooting his likely opponent at the next election, David Cameron.

And it was two fingers for anyone who thought that Gordon Brown's last Budget would be an anti-climax. He didn't just use his final Budget to make himself look thoroughly electable - he used the final sentence.

It was enough to restore my faith in Budgets as spectacles of political entertainment.