CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown presents the first Labour Budget for almost two decades tomorrow - and may bring the government's honeymoon with the electorate to an abrupt close.

For this looks like being a much different Budget than it was first flagged up to be.

It was, remember, originally heralded as a quick device for introducing an essentially popular measure - a windfall tax on the greedy privatised public utilities we all love to hate.

They were going to get their deserved come-uppance and young and old alike would reap the dividend.

But it is the groups in between who may feel the pinch.

For tax increases, from which Labour was so keen to be dissociated when seeking office, are to be tagged on to the Chancellor's honouring of the party's windfall tax manifesto pledge tomorrow, making what was to be a mini-Budget into the full-blown thing.

Mr Brown is painted into a corner on tax in a couple of ways, giving him both a credible excuse for a bout of belt-tightening, but also risking a sudden cooling of the electorate's love-affair with Labour as its no-tax-rises image crumbles.

For tied by its election promises not to put up income tax and to stay within the spending plans outlined by the previous Tory government, the Chancellor has to find ways of solving two problems. Both of them require revenue-raising measures that suggest that tomorrow he will be dishing out unpopular increases in alternative taxation.

The first problem is the so-called £4billion "black hole" in the last government's estimates of income over the next year.

The second is the booming economy showing signs of overheating.

A stamp on the brakes is called for to cut inflation-fuelling consumer spending.

It is consumers, then, who will be expected to provide the £4billion to fill the black hole and to have their personal spending power curbed to prevent the boom becoming a bust.

How this will happen, Mr Brown will inform us tomorrow.

He will probably do this with the devices that Chancellors find handiest; increases in the price of cigarettes, drink and petrol, with the last being dressed up as an environment-friendly "green" tax.

And forecasts are that, with Income Tax ring-fenced, one area the Chancellor will target is mortgage tax relief, at present worth £30 a month to 10million middle-class home-owners.

The tip is that he will dock £10 from this, raising at least £2billion.

But whatever revenue-raising measures he has up his sleeve, the first Labour government for 18 years is not going to the one as advertised.

For Middle England's reward for voting them in will be to join the fat-cat utility companies in the queue for having their wallets picked.

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