The British press expressed concern yesterday that the government's annual budget was too optimistic in its growth forecasts and targeted the next general election at the expense of real action.
Finance minister Alistair Darling forecast that the economy would shrink this year at the fastest rate since 1945, but said he expected a recovery later this year - a projection most British newspapers rejected as unrealistic.
"It was hard to find a single economist yesterday who believed that the economy would grow by 1.25 per cent next year, let alone by three per cent plus for the three years after that," the left-leaning Guardian said.
Commentators said Mr Darling's announcement of a new top rate of tax was a political ploy to reassure its core Labour voters ahead of an election due by the middle of next year, but warned it was a distraction.
"The plan to raise the top rate of income tax to 50 per cent from next April was astute political tactics, although poor revenue raising," said the Financial Times.
"But the grim state of Britain's books made bleak reading and the fragile optimism behind Mr Darling's plan for getting from here to fiscal rectitude could not be disguised."
The Daily Mail dismissed the chancellor of the Exchequer's projections with the headline Alistair in Wonderland, referring to Lewis Carroll's absurd novel Alice in Wonderland.
"Alistair Darling has gambled Britain's future on a 1970s-style tax raid against the rich and a wildly-optimistic forecast of economic recovery," it said, looking back to the left-wing Labour government of that era.
The Times added: "His budget sidestepped the central issue of the public finances: It answered the problem of future spending with a commitment to future borrowing but no clear or plausible route map to reducing debt."
Many individual measures to tackle the recession were welcomed, including tax cuts and a boost for jobs, the car industry and homebuyers, although they were accompanied by expected tax hikes on cigarettes, alcohol and fuel.
The Daily Mirror welcomed the new 50p tax rate, proclaiming Mr Darling as a Robin Hood character, after the fabled English folk hero who robbed from the rich to give to the poor.
But the left-leaning Independent regretted the return to the "politics of envy", saying the measure was unlikely to raise much revenue and "looks much more like a nod to public anger over high salaries and banking failures".
The right-wing Daily Telegraph went further: "If yesterday we were hoping for some wartime spirit, what we got instead was a declaration of class war."