Political commentators analyse the Budget.

Times

Anatole Kaletsky: "It remains to be seen whether the Tories can manoeuvre themselves out of the bizarre position where they promise to spend like socialists on the NHS, while they cut back on traditional Tory programmes such as defence and policing. To make matters worse, they seem utterly confused about whether they would spend the resulting savings on cutting taxes or on reducing a national debt which, as Mr Brown keeps quite rightly boasting, is already the lowest in the world. Can anyone be surprised that the only question worth asking about the next election is whether Mr Brown will be chancellor or prime minister in a few years time?

Anne Ashworth: "This year, the answers must be sought not only in the small print of the speech, but also in the footnotes of previous statements. These yield some surprising facts: wealthy investors are the greatest beneficiaries of Gordon Brown’s measures and should now be his biggest fans. Middle managers and small businesses will be tearing down his picture from their walls."

FT

James Blitz: "There are hurdles ahead for the government after this Budget. The loss of tens of thousands of civil service jobs will certainly test relations between the chancellor and some trade unions. There are risks, too, that the forthcoming spending round could see a chilly stand-off between the Treasury and some Whitehall departments. The biggest risk is that the Conservatives make headway with their claim that the re-election of Labour would imply new tax in-creases to pay for past expenditure. To push home that argument, the Tories must prove to the public that Labour is not delivering on public-service improvement. Making that case remains their one big card at the next election."

Philip Stephens: "You could tell he had finally matched Lloyd George's record for longevity in the job. Gordon Brown's style has become one of brutal, relentless repetition, the chancellor as political juggernaut. Unless you get excited about prudence and stability, Mr Brown had nothing startling to say about the economy yesterday. So he gave us a Budget about politics, politics and politics. The election pencilled in for May next year suddenly seems a lot closer."

Guardian

Larry Elliot: "Like Blackpool in a stick of rock, the word election was stamped through the centre of Gordon Brown's eighth budget. Forget the tax experts who said it was boring stuff, for while it contained few whizzbang measures, this was a nakedly political event. The chancellor spoke for just short of an hour and used 8,396 words, but the speech could be summed up in just four: polling day is coming. From beginning to end, the aim of the speech was clear: to stake out the political battleground of the next 15 months and ensure that when combat is joined in earnest, it is on Brown's terms. Not the government's, but his. The chancellor gave the impression, almost certainly intentional, of being the only person who could wrench the political agenda back to bread and butter issues after the prime minister's ill-fated adventure in Iraq."

Jackie Ashley: "Brown's budget has taken some nerve. The City forecasters have been ridiculing him for overoptimism. Even the international institutions have been dubious about some of his numbers. And apart from those job losses, announced with a little too much equanimity, there will still be some hard arguments this spring in the public spending review. But if Brown has pulled off the trick of big, sustainable investment in the public services we care about, it will be the biggest achievement of New Labour in power."

Telegraph

George Trefgarne: "On the letterbox of No 10 Downing Street it says: 'First Lord of the Treasury'. It is a reminder of how running the financial affairs of the country is the job of the prime minister as well as the chancellor of the Exchequer. But during Labour's time in office, it might as well have said 'Keeper of the Bedchamber' for all the influence the prime minister has had over the conduct of Gordon Brown. Until yesterday, that is. For Mr Brown's eighth Budget was the first which read as though it was written by Tony Blair. Who knows. Maybe the chancellor actually had the courtesy to show it to him before he delivered it. That really would be unprecedented. Its mantra, like an election slogan from a more polite age, was 'safety first', or 'stability', as Mr Brown put it. But do not be deceived. Politically, it was highly sophisticated, full of deception and guile, designed to trap the Tories in the run-up to the next election, which will probably take place in May 2005."

Neil Collins and Christopher Fildes: "No government has come close to this one in its untiring efforts to invent unproductive and often fatuous jobs in the public sector. There may indeed be more teachers and nurses than there were, but the real increase has been in the numbers employed to manage, administer and monitor them. No sign of any cuts there."

Independent

Steve Richards: "Gordon Brown has returned to some of his early themes. The aim of yesterday's Budget was almost precisely the same as his debut performance soon after Labour's first election win in 1997. All those years ago Mr Brown sought to prove that he could be trusted to run a stable economy and improve public services. With the Conservatives and some in the media currently accusing him of recklessness, taxing and spending like the oldest of old Labour villains, the chancellor is highlighting once more his relationship with prudence."

John Rentoul: "Gordon Brown is a political chancellor. They all are, of course. Even Nigel Lawson, who luxuriated - until it all went horribly wrong - in the title of 'the economists' chancellor' was a street-fighter when it came to politics. But with Brown, the politics are blatant and more obviously all-pervasive."

Mirror

James Hardy: "The middle classes might moan, but they don't face the daily grind of life on the breadline, too poor to eat properly or buy new clothes for the kids. Thanks to Mr Brown and a Labour government, that misery has been lifted for hundreds of thousands who once faced the endless cycle of poverty without hope."

Mail

Edward Heathcoat Amory: "Bureaucrats are for the chop, according to Gordon Brown. In a move calculated to undermine his Tory opponenents, and emphasise his own commitment to value for money in the public sector, the chancellor promised to take the axe to 40,000 Sir Humphreys and their ilk over the next four years. But this commitment is nowhere near as impressive as it seems. It comes against a background of a massive increase in public sector jobs since 1997, many of them useless administrators."