Saving up for the budget

With the budget appearing to many people to be a bit of a yawn, David McKie on Comment is Free suggests that it's because so much of it has been spun in advance.

There may here and there be innocent folk who will say: excuse me, but exactly what is the difference between the new honest, decent, straight dealing, manipulation-free political environment promised by Gordon Brown when he became prime minister, and the now much-regretted spin-driven methods of the discredited Campbell, Mandelson and of course, Blair?

Mckie argues that an element of leaking has always gone on and points out that some of the apparent leaks have turned out not to be true.

Though well aware what politicians and their acolytes are up to, newspapers print these speculative stories, partly because they believe there's a genuine chance it might happen, but partly because if the story proves to be wrong that's unlikely to be remembered for long.