ANALYSIS:ALISTAIR DARLING has endured some truly awful days since stepping up as Chancellor of the Exchequer nine months ago, writes Fiona Walsh.
With barely a pause for breath, he has lurched from the lingering Northern Rock crisis to the storm over the loss of discs containing 25 million tax benefit records, swiftly followed by his failed attempt to buy favourable headlines with a gimmicky and ill thought out pre-budget report.
But the darkest day of all must surely have been Wednesday. His first budget, traditionally an occasion for new chancellors to shine, has been universally panned as the dullest in living memory.
Devoid of ideas and lacking any boldness, it was backed by some extremely dodgy arithmetic - in short, a timid budget from a frightened chancellor.
He has every reason to be frightened, though. The sub-prime inspired global slowdown has forced him to cut his forecasts for Britain's economic growth once again, this time by quarter of a point for this year and next, to between 1.75 per cent and 2 per cent (this year) and 2.25-2.75 per cent (in 2009).
The trouble is, nobody believes his figures, which were described by one commentator as "heroically optimistic". Other, less kind commentators have simply ridiculed his sums, pointing out that they depend on the UK economy experiencing only a minor slowdown this year, followed by a smart recovery in 2009, a scenario so unlikely as to be laughable.
Robert Chote, director at the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies, said Darling had delivered his broadly-neutral budget "with fingers crossed".
If the downturn is deeper than expected, or if he is over-optimistic about the underlying strength of tax revenues, or if political pressure requires further giveaways, then he will find he must "inflict more pain" on an already disenchanted electorate.
As growth is slowing, so government borrowing is rising, and at a far faster rate than anyone had predicted. Darling has little room for manoeuvre after a series of over-optimistic fiscal forecasts and Chote believes that tax rises of some £8 billion are required to plug the hole in public finances.
Borrowing will rise by a higher than expected £7 billion in the coming fiscal year, to £43 billion, partly because of the refinancing of loans to the now-nationalised Northern Rock and some economists fear that the record £50 billion budget deficit suffered by Norman Lamont in 1993 could even be exceeded.
No wonder, perhaps, that Darling opted for safety first on Wednesday, preferring to target drinkers and gas-guzzling cars instead of making any bolder moves.
Desperate to re-establish his credentials as a safe pair of hands, he adopted "stability" as the theme of his maiden budget, so much so that he used the word no fewer than 23 times in his 51-minute speech - three times in the first three sentences alone.
Banging on about stability is not the same as ensuring it, however. And even as he was defending his budget in a series of radio and television interviews yesterday, stock markets around the world were tanking on the back of fresh fears over the credit market turmoil and impending recession.
But how much of this is Darling's fault - and how much can be laid at the door of Number 10? After 10 years at the Treasury, Gordon Brown must bear much of the responsibility for Britain's borrowing binge.
There is no doubt that Darling inherited a very poor hand from his predecessor. Throw in the US-inspired credit crisis and continuing turmoil in world markets and the chancellor has been dealt a hand that's virtually impossible to play.
Darling is not the only chancellor that has been forced to deal with a global crisis - Brown had to cope with the Asian financial meltdown within two months of taking over the Treasury 11 years ago. As now, there was meltdown in world markets and a currency crisis, culminating in Russia defaulting on its debts and the collapse of the Long Term Capital Management hedge fund in the United States.
But Brown has been a master of timing - or, as he has been described, more of a Macavity the Mystery Cat, always long gone when the problems emerge.
In his tenure, the housing boom continued apace and consumer spending remained buoyant. And the electorate was still in love with New Labour. It's hard for a new chancellor to pin the blame on the boss, although the opposition provided Darling with some support earlier this week.
"The chancellor was put in a hole by the prime minister and they both kept digging," Tory leader David Cameron told sniggering MPs in his budget response.
"In the years of plenty they put nothing aside. They didn't fix the roof when the sun was shining," he said.
So while the prime minister should take his share of the blame, Darling is doing himself no favours by continuing to ignore the coming storm, or by his constant refrain that Britain is in better shape than most other countries to cope with the slowdown.
Unless he can regain the initiative, he will continue to be haunted by suspicions that he is simply the prime minister's poodle.
In times of trouble, safety-first budgets are no disgrace - boring does not necessarily mean bad. Appearing to be frozen by indecision does, however.
And a chancellor who was unable even to introduce a tax on plastic bags in his first budget (although he did say he thought about it) does not look like the sort of chancellor to steer the economy through troubled times.
Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardian newspaper in London
