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Alistair Darling sharply raised the duty on cigarettes and alcohol and introduced a new showroom tax on gas-guzzling cars today in a party-pooping Budget debut as Chancellor.

Against the backdrop of a global credit crunch and stretched public finances – and with the next election at least a year away – Mr Darling clearly had little room for manoeuvre as he stood up in the Commons with only a glass of tap water as his "Budget tipple".

He found some extra funds to help reduce child poverty and to boost winter allowances for the elderly, but otherwise managed to please almost nobody in a 50-minute speech delivered, according to the Tory leader David Cameron, "with all the excitement of someone reading out a telephone directory".

Expert View

It was an unexciting Budget, a deliberately dull package, and I think it will be very unpopular

Philip Webster

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• Darling's first Budget: the main points

• Comment: an uninteresting and unpopular Budget

Multimedia

• Video sketch: Matthew Parris and Ann Treneman

• Video: the 'fingers crossed' budget

• Full coverage of the Budget

• Red Box: a list of Darling's new enemies

Environmentalists accused him of tinkering; small businesses of hurting them with tax rises; economists questioned his growth forecasts. Even the unions accused the Chancellor of "lacking the X factor".

But perhaps the most stinging attack came from Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, who told MPs that Mr Darling was just trying to clear up the mess left by his predecessor Gordon Brown.

"What we have seen today is an act of political ventriloquism," Mr Clegg said. "I would like to compliment the Prime Minister: I watched him very closely, his lips barely moved all the while the Chancellor was speaking."

Mr Darling started off with an unexpectedly bullish assessment of the country's prospects despite global economic turbulence.

He cut growth forecasts by a quarter-point to a range between 1.75 and 2.25 per cent this year – stronger than Japan, the United States and the euro zone – and between 2.25 and 2.75 per cent in 2009. Both figures are much more optimistic than market forecasts.

But although Mr Darling admitted that the Government's net borrowing requirements would exceed forecasts by almost £5 billion next year, he insisted said that the Treasury would still meet its "golden rule" of only borrowing to invest and delivering balanced budgets over the course of the economic cycle.

Although he did not mention him by name, Mr Darling said that Britain's "resilience" was due to the Government's economic record under Mr Brown, who was sitting behind his protégé on the Labour front bench.

"The reforms we have made since 1997 – independence for the Bank of England and tough fiscal rules – mean that Britain is now more resilient and better prepared to deal with future shocks and is better equipped to meet the challenges of rapid global change," Mr Darling said.

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