The national newspapers give their view of Gordon Brown's ninth Budget.

FT

Once again, business was asked to foot the bill with a mixture of stealth taxes, anti-avoidance measure and removal of reliefs. With little room left for manoeuvre, the chancellor was able to roll out his crowd-pleasers with a Budget that represents a modest fiscal tightening... Yesterday's Budget does not guarantee Labour a third election victory. But Mr Brown's lengthy list of pledges and handouts, prudently matched by tax rises invisible to voters, has given the opposition a hard target to shoot out.

Guardian

Mr Brown's speech as usual lacked nothing in confidence. But this ninth [Budget] was less an ode to joy than an ode to prudence. It was one of the most politicised budgets in recent memory. Mr Brown took £265m out of the economy - countering any suggestion of pre-electoral irresponsibility - and aimed his necessarily limited largesse at as many electoral targets as his delicate fiscal position would allow him.

Times

Irrespective of the outcome of the 2005 Budget, some taxing challenges are beginning to emerge for whoever holds the red Budget box five years later. This is less a consequence of any "black hole" in the national finances than the changing nature of taxation... If tax will be harder to extract in 2010, it is all the more important that public expenditure provides value for money. Mr Brown has to look even harder at Whitehall and ask whether it is delivering. What is "eye-catching" rarely survives a week beyond Budget day. It is the long-term vision which will make or break Labour.

Independent

Overall, the chancellor's figures may be open to query, but they cannot, at this stage, be disproved. And there can be no doubt that this Budget did the job it was supposed to do: it encouraged specific constituencies, it disappointed few and it left the impression of responsible housekeeping. It will not have harmed Labour's prospects of re-election; they have probably been improved.

Telegraph

Michael Howard scored well because the Budget was so thin, because he made enjoyable jokes at the expense of Alan Milburn - how his management of the election campaign is going badly - and, above all, because he offered a different vision. Where Mr Brown offered un-reconstructed statism, Mr Howard offered fewer quangos, less bureaucracy and lower taxes. Mr Brown made a stab at trying to convince us that he, too, is anti-bureaucracy but it was unconvincing. It was under him that public sector employment rose by more than 600,000... That is why this was such a dull Budget. There is nothing left in the kitty. He has spent it all.

Sun

Brown's own figures on tax make it clear that in the medium term many of us will pay more. That's exactly what happened in his Budget before the 2001 election, when he gave money away only to take it back the following year with a vengeance by raising national insurance. For all his tax increases, it's almost impossible not to go for a chancellor who has produced such impressive results on growth, inflation and interest rates.

Mail

This was very much the Budget of a prime minister-in-waiting, connecting with the grass-roots, ranging across every aspect of administration - and confirmed Mr Brown as the mainspring of this government. The prime minister seems pale and puny beside him.

Mirror

To call this a wild giveaway Budget as Tory leader Michael Howard did was utter nonsense. Gordon Brown doesn't know the meaning of the words. Even when he is trying to be generous he only loosens the purse-strings grudgingly... But Budget 2005 will be remembered for what Mr Brown did for the nation's schools.

Express

There was nothing benign of generous about this Budget. The chancellor was simply playing smoke and mirrors with taxpayers' money. What he gives with one hand he takes away with another. Such cheap tricks offer little real help to those struggling to make ends meet. Families don't want to have to rely even more heavily on state handouts, they just want to be taxed less.