Chancellor Brown's Budget had very little to do with fiscal policies and everything to do with squaring up to David Cameron for the election encounter to come. Chris Lloyd sums up yesterday's political punch-up.

TRADITIONALLY, a budget is about setting income against expenditure, about drawing up financial plans for the forthcoming fiscal year.

Yesterday's Budget had little to do with any of that. It was all about setting Gordon Brown against David Cameron, about drawing up battle plans for the inevitable election encounter.

In fiscal terms, Mr Brown fiddled very modestly around the edges. Raising stamp duty from £120,000 to £125,000 will hardly benefit anyone; raising inheritance tax exemption by £50,000 over the next four years will hardly be noticed by anyone; and putting an extra £30-a-year on the vehicle excise duty of gas guzzling cars will hardly deter the Chelsea tractor drivers who spend £30,000 on a 4x4.

But in political terms...

With Tony Blair relegated to the role of smiling spectator, Mr Brown went out of his way to take on Mr Cameron. "Our economic framework for stability has proved robust and prudent," he said. "On Black Wednesday - September 1992 - interest rates reached 15 per cent. Since 1997 interest rates have averaged five per cent."

Black Wednesday was 14 long years ago, but who was in the background of those pictures of Norman Lamont leaving 11, Downing Street? Of course, it was Mr Cameron.

Mr Brown then digressed gratuitously into a long list of items that he had no intention of taxing. He contrived to end the unnecessary list with the one jibe that has so far hurt Mr Cameron.

Mr Brown said: "I hold to our pledge not to extend Vat to a number of items: food, books and newspapers, public transport fares and children's clothes and children's shoes - and that includes flip-flops."

Mr Cameron has not performed any flip-flops on the environment. Indeed, the Tory leader exhibited how green he was by turning up at the Commons yesterday on his pushbike.

To take the air out of Mr Cameron's tyres, Mr Brown quite blatantly patched together what he hoped the headlines will call a green Budget.

Mr Cameron has had a wind turbine installed on his house; tit-for-tat Gordon goes one better and installs turbines on 25,000 public buildings.

Then Mr Brown talked about "carbon capture" - pumping the stuff under the North Sea rather than into outer space. "We are today publishing proposals for industry wide consultation..." he said. So that's talks about talks - but all that matters is that Mr Brown is seen to be green.

Having raided Mr Cameron's strongest asset, Mr Brown turned his attention to Tony Blair's best territory. Mr Blair liked education so much that in 1996 he famously named it three times as his leading priority. Now Mr Brown - who actually wrote the "education, education, education" soundbite - stole it back.

He said he would carry on investing in state education until the amount spent per pupil matched that spent in private schools. Hurrah, shouted the old Labour backbenchers who still enjoy the bloodsport of toff-baiting.

For this was a crude challenge to Mr Cameron: will he dare cut taxes and leave ordinary children worse off than those whose parents are rich enough to go private?

And that - in a re-run of Blair against Major, Hague, Duncan Smith and Howard - will be the Brown against Cameron battle line: one taxes so that the state can spend; the other cuts taxes so that the individual can spend.

In reply, Mr Cameron - who has clearly flip-flopped on his pledge to avoid Punch and Judy politics - bellowed some fantastic one-liners. "In a carbon-conscious world we have a fossil-fuel Chancellor... he is an analogue politician in a digital age".

But just as Mr Brown's Budget had very little to do with finances, so Mr Cameron's one-liners had nothing to do with policies or principles.