Gordon Brown looked most annoyed at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday to be asked whether No 10 had this time been given more than two days' notice of the contents of the Chancellor's Budget. We know why he was irritated, for the accusation was all wrong - when Mr Brown was at the Treasury, Tony Blair was lucky to get half as long advance warning as that.

“The Chancellor and the Prime Minister live in an entirely different world from everybody else,” taunted David Cameron after the Budget statement. Well that's progress: in the past they lived in an entirely different world from one another. Mr Blair's former economic adviser Derek Scott has written about how the Prime Minister used to have to plead with the Chancellor for just a hint of what he was planning in his Budget. Ah, those were the days: the Cabinet grew used to being pulled together on the day of the Budget to hear what they would be doing for the next few years.

Mr Brown used his Budgets to dominate the domestic political agenda. And not only the Budgets: he created an annual Pre-Budget Report, and a three-yearly Comprehensive Spending Review, all of them designed to wrest control of the Government's priorities from No 10. Now that Alistair Darling is not running a dual administration alongside Downing Street, it leaves the Chancellor in a dilemma: what the hell is he supposed to do with all these high-profile opportunities?

So yesterday we heard about a lot of stuff that we had heard about before in previous budgetary statements, such as reductions in the basic rate of income tax and lower corporation tax, both announced by Mr Brown in his final Budget last year, or the charge on non-doms revealed in the Autumn Statement. “This Budget confirms the spending plans set out in last year's spending review,” Mr Darling intoned. Yes, that was all Mr Brown's work, too; next three years, sorted.

We also heard a lot of stuff that isn't going to happen until way into the future - deferred green taxes, some research into road pricing (watch that one; it is going to be interesting), work capability assessments for incapacity benefit recipients in 2010, a new target for failing schools by 2011, a savings account available from 2010. We even had a pre-promise that in next year's Budget the Chancellor would pre-announce carbon targets up to 2022.

Things we know already, things that aren't happening yet - and then there were the things that may not happen at all. So we had, out for consultation or under review: a plastic-bag tax, a target for making new non-domestic buildings zero carbon, moves towards longer-term fixed-rate mortgages.

Stuff we had already been told and stuff that might not happen wasn't the worst of it: Mr Darling also had to confirm that growth is lower and inflation higher and times are going to be tough. This Budget gave the Government nothing but a slew of overwhelmingly negative economic stories over the past week. Lots of opportunities for publicity are a great idea when things are on the up; less of a bonus when things are looking down. Mr Darling has taken two hits - in the autumn and yesterday - when traditionally he would only have had to take one. The public generally will go away with only negative impressions from this Budget: price rises, inflation increase, an economy in trouble, booze and fags up and higher petrol taxes still on the horizon.

Remember how it used to be? Labour backbenchers cheering the Chancellor to the rooftops, the front bench jeering at the Opposition, a Conservative leader, his MPs glumly silent behind him, flat-footed and faltering as he tried to respond to the latest stunning onslaught from Mr Brown. The difference now is not just because of a faltering economy, which gives Mr Darling less room for manoeuvre.

It is because a system, set up by Mr Brown to enable him to run a parallel government alongside Mr Blair's, has run its useful course. When Labour came to power, we had just one annual Budget Statement. Mr Brown introduced the CSR and the Pre-Budget Report as well and used all the occasions ruthlessly to seize control of the domestic political agenda.

In his earlier Budgets he prioritised welfare and tax credits over public services, to the gloom of No 10. When he did announce increases in departmental spending, Mr Brown not only told the ministers the amount they were getting, he would publish a slew of targets telling them what to prioritise, and even directly order them how to spend it - he told David Blunkett, for instance, in March 2000 that the extra £1 billion for schools was to be sent directly to head teachers, bypassing local education authorities. That was the same year that Mr Blair stole a march on Mr Brown and pre-announced a vast increase in spending on the NHS, to the fury of the Chancellor. “You've stolen my f***ing Budget!” he yelled. It was a rare occasion when Mr Blair seized the upper hand. From then on, No 10 would get to hear less and less of Mr Brown's plans in advance.

Mr Brown's statements were political masterclasses: you could spot in them where he had already planned to be in two or three years' time. The announcement of a seemingly innocuous report here, a review there - Derek Wanless on the future needs of the NHS, Kate Barker on housing supply, Rod Eddington on long-term transport needs, Nicholas Stern on the economics of climate change - pointed you in the direction that the Chancellor was headed. By the time No 10 had caught up with him, he was usually ten stations ahead, and steaming on.

There was none of that yesterday. No tricks, no plans, no drama. There didn't need to be, now that there is only one person in charge of the Government. And it isn't, any more, the Chancellor.

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