THE PRE-BUDGET REPORT is usually the parliamentary equivalent of The Money Programme. Today’s report, we’re told, is more likely to be a version of Ready Steady Cook, with Gordon Brown preparing a plateful of humble pie and then eating it.

According to his critics, the Chancellor will be obliged to confess to the House of Commons that his economic projections for 2005 have proved to be wildly optimistic. He will then have to concede that there is a “black hole” in the public finances, before sitting down a broken man, with his prized reputation as the wizard of 11 Downing Street exposed as a shameful fabrication.

That, at any rate, is the version that the Conservative Party appears to be banking on. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, has promised a “savage attack” on Mr Brown and his legacy. He has already warmed up with a newspaper interview in which he got personal. The Chancellor, he declared, is “unpleasant and brutal”. It is, furthermore, “difficult to have any relationship with him as a Shadow”. How they must be quaking at the Treasury as they await this clash between their champion and his youthful opponent. Denis Healey turned aside an assault by Sir Geoffrey Howe with the observation that it was like being “savaged by a dead sheep”. Mr Brown is about to be yapped at by the Andrex puppy.

It has been said (and repeated on Michael Cockerill’s television programme on the Tories on Saturday night) that to be Leader of the Opposition is the hardest task in British politics. Yet the rate of attrition since 1997 implies that to serve as Shadow Chancellor is far more, to borrow a phrase, unpleasant and brutal. In just eight years Mr Brown has got through Peter Lilley, Francis Maude, Michael Portillo, Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin, before reaching Mr Osborne. None of these men were fools — far from it. With the exception of David Willetts, this Chancellor has encountered the finest minds that the Conservative Party has to offer. One of them (Mr Portillo) has been reduced to making a living as a newspaper columnist. It does not get sadder than that.

Admittedly, not all of them have been so lowered. Mr Howard was thought to have performed well against Mr Brown and was promoted to succeed Iain Duncan Smith as a consequence. Mr Howard was, indeed, a relatively impressive figure. He also had the luck to shadow Mr Brown in the two years after the combined effects of the dot-com bust and the atrocities of September 11, 2001 had derailed the international economy. Had he remained Shadow Chancellor until the hustings last May, some of his predictions of doom and gloom would have embarrassed him. For what the five former Shadow Chancellors have in common, and what this one would be wise to avoid, is the fallacy of the “false dusk”.

There are three golden rules that characterise this Chancellor. The first is, by a combination of design and some fortune, a phenomenal record. The economy has grown for 53 consecutive quarters, the longest stretch since the Romans created full employment through a massive road-building programme. Household net wealth is 50 per cent higher than when Labour arrived in office. For most families, the past decade has been the “never had it so good” era. Since Mr Brown replaced Ken Clarke at the Exchequer, the percentage of households with a mobile phone has risen from 16 per cent to 76 per cent, home computer ownership from 27 to 58 per cent, CD players from 59 to 86 per cent, microwaves from 75 to 89 per cent and cable/satellite TV receivers from 19 to 49 per cent. That Stanley Kalms, the chairman of Dixons, still donates money to the Tories seems a little ungrateful. There are not many votes for any Shadow Chancellor who assails prosperity.

The second golden rule is that on the rare occasions when Mr Brown’s predictions go astray, nobody normal cares about it. I defy anyone to produce a voter who has been heard to say anything like “in the light of Mr Brown’s outrageous manipulation of his fiscal framework I will be transferring my support to the Conservative Party”. What, after all, would real people prefer Mr Brown to do this year: engage in some intellectual creativity as to the precise application of his rules, or raise taxes and reduce public spending? Even the City does not seem to mind too much, partly because with company profitability at its highest in five years, it is hard to create an atmosphere of crisis. Shadow Chancellors who babble on about this sort of stuff might as well be speaking Swahili.

The final factor is that Mr Brown has become a master of timing his slowdowns. They invariably occur shortly after a general election has been won, leaving acres of space for recovery before the ballot box is again consulted. History is repeating itself. Who will be bothered in 2009 or 2010 about the rate of growth this year? This is especially so when, in what is deemed a bad 12 months, the number of people in employment has risen by 300,000 to the highest recorded. All the various organisations that (correctly) anticipated a weaker outcome for the economy in 2005 than the Treasury forecast now expect a more robust showing in 2006 and are positively hearty towards 2007. It would be surprising if this did not help Mr Brown’s standing.

A shrewd Shadow Chancellor would learn from the plight of his predecessors. He would not wager on Mr Brown losing control of the economy or his balance sheet but focus intensely on the value for money achieved from public spending.

Any “savage attack” aimed at the Chancellor risks turning into the charge of the Light Brigade. What we will see today is not political “humble pie” — more like a downpayment on a cherry cake.

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