the Conservatives still have several questions to answer about their own approach

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the Conservatives still have several questions to answer about their own approach to "tax and spend". Indeed, some of those questions are being raised by their own Shadow Cabinet members alarmed at entering an election campaign defending selective cuts in their sensitive policy areas. Even so, the Conservatives have two threatening lines of attack that worry ministers. It is a significant achievement to invest heavily in public services without destabilising the economy and alienating voters.

Even now voters moan about council tax increases, but complain less about the National Insurance rises introduced by the Chancellor.At the same time. He declared last summer that his five tests had not been met Do not expect a more enthusiastic endorsement in the budget. If anything, the statement last summer will seem like a gushing melody in support of Britain's membership of the euro, compared with the subdued words in the Budget that will rule out a referendum this side of the election.Will it work - this concerted attempt to make economic stability a key political dividing line and the essential pre-condition for achieving progress in other areas? In theory, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown should have high hopes of establishing a more progressive feelgood factor than the one generated by Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson in the run-up to the 1987 election. He will seek to compare the stability of the economy with the alleged recklessness of the Conservatives' policies. Prudence is back for a purpose, part of which is highly political.Not that Mr Brown has been especially reckless in recent years. The increase in public spending announced earlier in this term was substantial but also the minimum required. Mr Brown would have been much more foolishly irresponsible if he had not spent significant sums in an attempt to improve schools, hospitals and - with less enthusiasm - the rotting railways.Nor can anyone accuse Mr Brown of being imprudent in his rush to join the euro.

Against such a secure background, he will argue, enterprise and fairness can flourish. Thank you and good night. The imminent return of Prudence does not imply that this most political of Chancellors has ceased to think politically, content to plod along without taking account of the broader political situation The opposite is the case. Nor, so I suspect, will he have much to offer in the way of tax cuts. The Chancellor's big theme will be the stability of Britain's economy, a situation, he will stress, that should not be taken for granted. In this cautious mode he will confirm that public spending will rise at a lower rate than in recent years even though the economy is growing faster than forecast. Ladies and Gentlemen stand by for the return of Prudence. In Gordon Brown's Budget, to be delivered in less than two weeks' time, there will be few spectacular fireworks Mr Brown will not be going on another heavy spending spree.

If, that is, he wants to avoid going down in history as the man who took the irony out of the title "Yes, Minister".a.hamilton independent.co.uk More from Adrian Hamilton. But he can do something to investigate and expose how the raw intelligence came to the point of dramatic assertion within the system. But then how can you judge their culpability without reference to the pressures placed upon them from above, with the Prime Minister's director of communications sitting on their shoulder?Lord Butler is not allowed by his terms - and may be glad of the fact - to go into the issue that most concerns politicians and public: that of the use to which the intelligence was put. That the intelligence community grossly overestimated Saddam Hussein's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction (just as they underestimated Libya and Iran's) is beyond dispute. It was also, it has to be said, to a feeling by his juniors that he had proved too weak to hold the line. Whether this made him a good choice to lead an Oxford college and whether Oxford is wise to continue the traditional practice of offering the headships of colleges as a retirement job for senior public officials in this day and age, is another question.But the question of whether he is the right man to head an inquiry into so important an issue as the intelligence leading to war is very much to the point now.