Budget 2010: Is that it… Darling?

Saltus's Dan Kemp on what investors should take away from Alistair Darling's third Budget.

There are few people who would have swapped places with Alistair Darling last Wednesday as he faced the seemingly impossible task of steering a course between a politically expedient but fiscally disastrous ‘giveaway’ budget and alienating Labour’s core supporters with a clear plan to tackle the huge fiscal deficit. Against this background, most commentators appear to agree he did well by doing nothing. This view appeared to be shared by the capital markets, with gilts, sterling and UK equities all broadly unchanged following the speech. The prisoner’s dilemma The dilemma faced by the ...