Peter Hoskin

Pasties and jerry cans — who'd have thought that yesterday's politics would descend into a roaring debate about two such innocuous items? And still the hullabaloo goes on. Most of today's front pages lead with one or both of the stories, although I'd say it's the jerry cans that win out overall. Thanks to Francis Maude's suggestion that ‘a bit of extra fuel in a jerry can in the garage is a sensible precaution to take,’ we're seeing headlines such as ‘Pumps go dry as ministers provoke panic’. As with the pasty row, which James discussed yesterday evening, the political dangers of this stretch far beyond the actual matter at hand.

George Osborne's two fiscal rules have been around since his very first Budget, delivered almost two years ago, so they're hardly news. But they do underpin much of what he's done since, including last week's statement, so they're also worth knowing about. Fraser touched on ome of the detail in a post last weekend, but here's a supplementary guide for CoffeeHousers: 1) The deficit rule. This is the one that seems to cause the most confusion, perhaps because it has often been simplified — wrongly — as something like ‘eliminate the deficit by the end of this Parliament’. Fact is, the ‘end of this Parliament’ doesn't come into it.

Introducing Ed Miliband, Labour's best hope since Tony Blair. Oh, I'm kidding, of course — but it's still striking that, this morning, Labour have their biggest lead in a ComRes poll for seven years. And the size of the lead? Ten points, but it could be even bigger. The Peter Cruddas revelations fell right in the middle of ComRes's polling. Apparently, those interviews conducted after Sunday had Labour with a 17-point lead. Of course, you can slap every caveat across this that you like: we're still ages away from the election; one poll does not make a trend; the 17-point figure is based on a subset of a subset of people; and so on. But this ComRes poll, and a few others out today, will still jangle nerves and fray tempers along Downing Street.

‘It will be awesome for your business.’ So said Peter Cruddas, co-treasurer of the Tory party, as he tried to peddle access to David Cameron for £250,000 a shot. Only he wasn't talking to businessmen this time; he was talking to a couple of investigative reporters from the Sunday Times (£), who were armed with dictaphones and video cameras. And, as the resulting footage shows, he blustered himself over the edge. A ‘premier league’ of donors was spoken of, whose ideas are ‘fed in’ to Downing Street's policy process. There was a claim that the biggest donors can be invited for dinner at Cameron's private flat in No.10, where they can ask him ‘practically any question [they] want’.

Four days after George Osborne signed its death warrant, there is still life in the 50p rate yet. The two main political interviews in today's papers — Ed Miliband in the Telegraph, Danny Alexander in the Times (£) — both focus heavily on the top rate's impending demise. The Labour leader, of course, is continuing to ask whether David Cameron and George Osborne will themselves benefit from the move to 45p, without actually managing to commit his party to a policy. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury is left defending a 45p rate, and does so by borrowing a recent Lib Dem slogan for the coalition as a whole: ‘This is a Budget for the millions, not the millionaires.

How significant was this Budget? On an economic level, not very. There's no discernible impact on growth: all of the main forecasts have more or less stayed the same since the Autumn Statement. Borrowing is the tiniest bit lower, mainly thanks to a £23 billion accountancy trick with Royal Mail pensions. And even many of the policies announced today will barely rouse the Exchequer's attention. That cut in the top rate of income tax to 45p? It will mean only £100 million a year less in direct revenues. That stamp duty increase for properties worth over £2 million? It will net only £300 million a year. The overall effect is a fiscally neutral document, as expected. The fuss-to-impact ratio for Budget 2012 is pretty high.

Why did Gordon Brown wait until the last few weeks of Labour's thirteen-year reign to implement a 50p tax rate? Easy. Because it wasn't so much a fiscal policy as a fiendish trap, designed to cut into a Tory government's flesh. But now, it seems, the trap has snared another victim: Labour itself. The Telegraph's Daniel Knowles has already neatly summarised the politics arising from Sam Coates' report (£) that Labour will neither back the scrapping of the 50p rate nor promise to reinstate it either. But the basic point is worth repeating: if that's the approach that Labour chooses, then they'll be left in a complete mess. They can attack the coalition all they like for cutting taxes for high earners, but the answer will come back, ‘well, would you keep it?

No wonder David Cameron and Barack Obama were being so chummy: they both knew that they could help each other. The Times carries an intriguing story (£) on its front page this morning, about how the two men discussed a plan to get fuel prices down in the UK and the US. The idea is that both countries — and perhaps more — would release some of their oil reserves. And so supply would go up, and prices would come down. As would our reliance on the oil-rich countries of the Middle East. Apparently, we're some distance from a deal yet, but you can see why both the PM and the President would want one to be struck — and soon.