Tomorrow’s budget - Opportunity dressed in a hair-shirt

NOT since the great Monty Python sketch, in which north of England voices remember the awfulness of their upbringing, culminating in the proud, chest-swelling boast by one that “we lived in hole in road”, has there been such glee in misery.

Politicians, economists, commentators, trade unionists, employer representatives, and more or less anyone confronted with a microphone, have all accepted that tomorrow’s budget will be judged a success only if its severity surpasses anything endured in recent history.

Like Catholics of old, riven with guilt, we have been convinced that we have been naughty and we expect to be punished. The budget will have a profound impact on our incomes, but it has to do very much more.