IN A little over a week’s time, Gordon Brown will deliver his tenth Budget. So familiar have the Chancellor’s annual setpiece outings to the Commons’ dispatch box become that they now seem almost as much a part of national ritual as those yearly Christmas re-runs of The Great Escape.

Given that the lucky Mr Brown has retained his Houdini-like ability to escape unharmed from all sorts of fiendish political and fiscal traps, that is appropriate enough.

Yet if the advance billing for this latest appearance by the Chancellor is to be believed, the impending Budget will also be about as exciting as a damp Boxing Day’s “classic” repeat. We have been told to expect few fireworks and no big surprises.

Can this be correct? After all, this may be Mr Brown’s last Budget.

True, Tony Blair’s determination to cling on in No 10 for a while longer may mean that it is more likely to be the Chancellor’s penultimate Budget day, but if there is any chance at all that next week may mark his last appearance with the red Budget box, it seems improbable that Mr Brown is the sort to depart the stage not with a bang, but merely a whimper.

I will return to the politics later, but the economic rationale behind predictions that Mr Brown is about to deliver a truly boring Budget also merit some scrutiny.

There are several elements to the economic case for Wednesday, March 22, to be a humdrum occasion. First, January’s key public finance numbers were much better than expected, easing the financial stresses faced by the Treasury.

Secondly, Mr Brown’s manipulations of the way in which he measures his “golden rule” have further reduced pressure for tax increases.

Thirdly, he has given himself an extra cushion with December’s £2 billion-a-year tax raid on the oil companies.

And fourthly, the combination of the Chancellor’s Whitehall efficiency drive and an impending squeeze on future spending will limit the need for him to find extra resources.

Careful examination suggests, however, that these arguments are quite weak. Consider the news from January’s public finance data: there is no doubt that these were strong figures and came as a welcome boost for Mr Brown that coincided with his birthday.

For the month, Inland Revenue payments were up by more than a fifth from a year earlier, swollen by a 51 per cent jump in corporation tax. This meant that over the first ten months of the 2005-06 financial year, revenues have risen by a healthy 7.8 per cent compared with the same period in 2004-05, broadly in line with Mr Brown’s December projections.

The upshot is that, for the first time since 2000, the Chancellor may actually meet his own fiscal forecasts — although only those made most recently. We should not forget that now he expects to borrow some £37 billion in 2005-06, compared with just £17 billion in 2002.

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