The Pre-Budget Report is more than a blank outlining of policy. It’s an opportunity for the Chancellor to put his own stamp on the political agenda: Here, Frank Sutton analyses the word clouds from Alistair Darling’s 2008 and 2009 speeches to the Commons.

With stress like this, surely it won’t be long before Alistair Darling’s jet-black eyebrows go as grey as the rest of his hair. If ever there was a time not to be Chancellor, now is surely it. An ugly recession, a resurgent opposition and a boss whose popularity is shrinking faster that the economy – for poor old Mr Darling it must feel like he’s in the middle of a perfect political storm.

2008

It was against this backdrop that he stood up before the Commons to deliver his Pre-Budget Report last month. The world clouds show the contrasting tones of that speech and for the same address in 2008. Among the words selected, the usual suspects are all represented, but what makes the clouds really interesting is the differences in emphasis.

The BBC’s Nick Robinson felt that with his feet now firmly under the table at Number 11, 2009’s report was Darling’s first real budget; the first where he had some freedom to get across something of his own politics and silence those who persist in seeing him as Gordon Brown’s ‘Mini Me’. Of course, the ongoing recession would be the most important force shaping his utterances, but reading between the lines some of the Chancellor’s concerns emerge.

2009

The 2009 cloud makes abundantly clear that Darling was keen to grab the mantle of the quiet, unflashy economy-healer, being honest about the true extent of the problems. If he was determined to leave no room for his opposite number George Osborne to occupy this territory, he did an admirable job. The words ‘pay’, ‘spending’, ‘tax’ and ‘recession’ are all far more noticeable than in the same address the year before.

Of course the added prominence of ‘pay’ and ‘spending’ relates to swingeing cuts in the latter and freezes in the former. Equally, Darling dished out some tough love when it came to tax. In 2009, one of the big changes was the cut in VAT (to 15%). This year we had confirmation that the 17.5% rate is back with us for 2010. Similarly the stamp duty ‘holiday’ on smaller properties is to come to an end. It seems that the largesse of the two Scots in power only goes so far.

The words ‘help’ and ‘support’ are big hitters in both clouds. In 2008 however that help and support was to help business to halt their slide and this year it is too assist them in climbing out of the abyss.

One of the two biggest stories from the 2009 Pre- Budget Report was the hike in National Insurance. This follows on from an identical bump in 2008. Yet note the words ‘national’ and ‘insurance’ are hard to spot in both clouds – a useful reminder that the headline-grabbing announcements don’t always hog the limelight in word clouds. After all, why draw too much attention to those announcements which are bound to be unpopular?

The same is true for the real story of the 2009 report, the 50% tax on bank bonuses of more than £25,000. ‘Banks’ – the organisations blamed by many for getting us all into this mess in the first place – are hard to spot, just as they were in the 2008 cloud.

Yet none of this doom and gloom – or what the Westminster set like to euphemistically call ‘tough choices’ - should disguise the fact that the Chancellor also emphasised (again and again) something inherently positive. Namely that he expects a modest return to growth in 2010. And that explains why the word ‘growth’ is fairly sizeable in the 2009 cloud and almost impossible to spot in 2008. From a 3.75% contraction in 2009 to a 1-1.5% expansion in 2010.

‘Every cloud...’ and all that.