Budget reaction will get Gordon fuming again

Clear away the fax machines. Hide the phones. In the Number 10 bunker, they can expect Gordon Brown to get very, very angry this morning. He will be prepping for Prime Minister's Questions when the Treasury Select Committee post on their website their verdict on Alistair Darling's Budget. And Gordon's closest aides are braced for another bout of office equipment hurling by the Kirkcaldy Mangler.

The committee is chaired by John McFall, a long-time friend of the PM's, but McFall has increasingly become frustrated that his fellow Scot seems to have stopped listening to him since entering Number 10. He recently attacked Brown for failing to do more in the Budget to tackle child poverty, writing in the Guardian that his "inaction" was a "bad omen".

The leading Tory on the committeee, Michael Fallon, has the killer instinct and tore into the Chancellor's wildly optimistic forecasts when his chief economic adviser, Dave Ramsden, was given a grilling by the committee.

PMQs will not be easy today with David Cameron able to exploit the fact that Labour MPs are massing to defeat the bill to part-privatise the Royal Mail and that Brown will be dependant on Cameron's Tories to get it through. More than 100 MPs are prepared to vote against the government, yet Brown appears set on his suicide mission.

Meanwhile, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, is flying on blindly, pushing ahead with a voluntary ID card scheme in Manchester as the first step to a national compulsory system.

Some of her own key Cabinet colleagues are convinced that the £5bn project will be shelved as part of the Treasury review of public spending, and there is intense speculation at Westminster that after the June 4 European elections, Brown will chuck her on the scrap heap, along with the ID Cards.