Star comment: Bitter pill to swallow on taxation

He has sweetened the pill, so to speak, by saying that the new tax will raise money to double funding for primary school sport.

As Mr Osborne is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and not a minister of health, it is easy to be cynical about what he has done. And as it has been dressed up in the clothes of a concerned nanny looking out for the health and welfare of young Britons, it is perhaps indelicate to bring money into it, and mention the £520 million a year the tax will raise – unless of course soft drinks makers drastically reduce sugar levels.

In contrast to this high-level intervention to make us more healthy, the other much-heralded announcement, to make all English schools become academies, is being trumpeted as something that will set schools free from meddling.

This is a historic move. For the first time in more than 100 years local councils will no longer be education authorities. So, after the repeated bashing of council budgets at Mr Osborne's behest over the last few years, they are now to be on the receiving end of a mugging in which they will lose their educational role, which they exercised through the prism of local democracy.

Cash for academies comes direct from the Government rather than the local education authority, and the headteacher is the king or queen of their own domain. Academies have greater freedoms which allow them, within limits, to carve their own paths with such things as their admissions process.

The underlying argument in forcing all English schools to become academies is that this will drive up standards. There are academy schools which are beacons of excellence. But experience even here in Shropshire has shown that turning schools into academies does not of itself solve their problems.

Other things in the Budget which catch the eye include the plan for new elected mayors in parts of the country, part of a "devolution revolution."

As for all the economic forecasts and targets – and this was, after all, a Budget, we must remember – these are of note if only to see how wide of the mark they turn out to be.

Budgets can be boring, but Mr Osborne has come up with an interesting mix of innovation and showmanship which will do his credentials as potential PM material no harm with his Tory colleagues.