Gordon Brown axed a little known tax break in last week’s Budget.

The Home Computer Initiative gave people the chance to buy a home computer out of untaxed income.

But Brown didn’t tell his cabinet colleagues. Several Government departments signed up for the scheme just days before he axed the perk.

Given that Brown is so keen to trail budget decisions, you’d have thought he could have tipped them off not to bother, to avoid disappointing their employees.

It just shows that joined-up Government is a soundbite, not a policy.

Once upon a time, budget proposals were the greatest secret In Whitehall. 

Chancellors of the Exchequer disappeared into purdah weeks before the annual budget speech. Revealing proposed fiscal changes was a resigning matter. In 1947, Labour’s Chancellor Hugh Dalton fell on his sword for spilling the beans to a lobby correspondent just before his budget speech. (Which at least spared him from the infamy of devaluing the pound two years later.)

Today, all these conventions have gone out of the window. Government spinmeisters trail budget decisions weeks before the event. Or fly kites that never take flight, to make the real budget seem more voter-friendly.

It’s probably inevitable. But it makes us all very cynical. Hugh Dalton must be turning in his grave, wondering how honour could have been devalued so swiftly after he made his sacrifice.

Standards aren’t what they used to be in journalism.

Budget day is one of the great set-pieces in political journalism. After weeks of speculation, the media finally get the chance to report the real decisions. Today’s budget was Gordon Brown’s 10th – an extraordinary landmark, regardless of your view of the Chancellor’s decisions. It may – or may not – be his last before taking over as Labour leader and Prime Minister.

One senior journalist made a terrible howler today. Anne McElvoy of the London Evening Standard repeatedly referred to Brown’s achievement in completing a decade as chancellor. In two articles. Quick maths lesson for Ms McElvoy. Gordon Brown became Chancellor on Friday 2 May 1997. (A lovely warm day, I seem to remember.) Less than 9 years ago. Do the maths…

Today’s headlines will do nothing for Tony Blair’s reputation. Another stack of stories about Labour’s secret loans, and polls confirming that voters think Blair has offered peerages for cash.

A decade ago, Blair made the political weather, punishing the Tories with devastating attacks on cash for questions and lying ministers. He derailed John Major’s 1997 election campaign within days by focusing on sleeze. He promised that Labour would be whiter than white. Voters thought the days of politicians on the make were over.

But Blair has proved as a huge disappointment to anyone who trusted him to set higher standards. Within months of his first landslide in 1997 he was mired in controversy over Bernie Eccleston’s Labour donation. He claimed to be a ‘pretty straight kind of guy’. The evidence suggests otherwise. The mystery is why Blair – an intelligent man, who recognised that Labour had to change to win the trust of the electorate – couldn’t see that claiming to be whiter than white wasn’t enough. He had to prove it by his actions.

The reason is that Blair, like most politicians, has far too little contact with the real world. He should spend more time in the Dog and Duck, listening to real voters, and less time in the corridors of Westminster and the studios at Millbank.

I was about to set off for school. We were due to sing Santa Lucia in our music class. But I felt off colour: full-blown (boy) flu was sure to strike. And HTV’s courtroom drama, Crown Court, was on tv after the lunchtime news. (I didn’t mention this to Mum…) A sick note was prepared, and I looked forward to a lazy day at home.

Mid morning, the news came through that the Prime Minister had resigned. Harold Wilson – barely 60, and just two years after returning to Downing Street – was stepping down. It was the shock of the year. (Apart from second division Southampton beating hot favourites Manchester United in the FA Cup Final. And possibly the Wurzels getting to number one with ‘I’ve got a brand new combine harvester’…)

Wilson said later he never intended to stay more than two years. Later, insiders suggested the PM knew that his mind was going, an early sign of the tragic impact of the Alzheimer’s disease that would kill him. But on 16 March 1976, the nation was stunned.

Three decades on, Wilson is unique. The only PM in living memory who has chosen to go. All his successors have been forced out by election defeat or internal rebellion. Tony Blair could learn a useful lesson from the last Labour leader before him to win an election.

(For the record, Wilson actually won four polls to Blair’s three, though 1966 was the closest he came to a landslide!)