BUDGET SPEECHES: A VERY BRITISH PREOCCUPATION

Britain's interest with the Budget is well-founded. It's a time to digest unwelcome news about tax hikes on just about everything. A time to hear about training and welfare initiatives. And a time to calculate who are the winners and who are the losers. A very British pre-occupation.

Another preoccupation is our history. Budget interest dates back to the first annual Budget in the 1720's when Sir Robert Walpole was Chancellor of the Exchequer. But we can thank another of his former colleagues as Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, who used his Budget speech to introduce a temporary measure–income tax. Temporary?

Symbolism is important for all Budget speeches. And that extends to the special box that is displayed by the Chancellor on the steps of his residence before the Budget. The Budget box was crafted for William Gladstone so he could carry his speech from Downing Street to Parliament. Perhaps that care and diligence for official paperwork could be copied by other Ministers of the Crown and senior policemen?

The shortest speech is recorded as 45 minutes long and was given by Benjamin Disraeli in 1867. And the record for the longest speech – timed at four hours 45 minutes – goes to William Gladstone, who was sustained, so we gather, by a drink of sherry and beaten egg. Unusually the Chancellor is still permitted by the House to have an alcoholic drink during his speech. Quite so. His successors now settle for mineral water which is perhaps a little unimaginative in the historical context of the speech. Other notable imbibers have included Kenneth Clarke with a whisky and Geoffrey Howe with a gin and tonic. How British.

So with the Budget we celebrate a peculiarly British event. The speeches are typically not theatrical. But they are thorough. In fact it's a rare moment for the Chancellor to hog the limelight. Something that former Chancellor Geoffrey Howe, described by Diane Abbott as the most boring man in Parliament, avoided until he resigned from office, delivered his resignation speech and effectively gave the coup de grace to Mrs Thatcher. All in a day's work for former Chancellors.

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"I got a tremendous reaction to the end of the speech. People were waving order papers and cheering; I kept pinching myself. I think I produced the budget which had raised more taxation than any other in living memory, so I had to wonder whether they'd been listening to it!."

Kenneth Clarke, Chancellor of the Exchequer