Yesterday’s Pre-budget report has been the subject of intense media speculation about what it may contain - and funnily enough, when Alistair Darling opened his red box surprises were hard to find.

The Chancellor’s PBR had been comprehensively leaked before the Parliamentary statement this afternoon - unlike any other budget before. But what did the government stand to gain?

The risk in using leaks to ‘spin’ positive headlines before an event is that the follow-up headlines need to be different - in other words, leak all the good news beforehand and the only things left to report afterwards are the negatives.

Yet over the past week we have seen a systematic leaking of the contents of Alistair Darling’s statement. On Radio 4’s Today programme one commentator went so far as to suggest the scale of the leaking may have constituted criminal behaviour, as the pre-budget report is certainly market sensitive information. Indeed, the FTSE had risen nearly 200 points before the Chancellor had even spoken - absolutely influenced by media coverage of the PBR’s expected content.

So has the Government benefited? The weekend’s news cycle may have been positive, talking about the ‘fiscal stimulus’ and (much more importantly) yesterday morning’s headlines were dominated by the proposed tax on high-earners, positioning Gordon Brown as against the ‘super-rich’ and clinging to Tony Blair’s pledge not to raise income tax. (The policy will only come in if Labour are re-elected, so to not break one New Labour’s founding promises.) Today’s headlines have made a great deal of this change, with some heralding the ‘death’ of New Labour.

But perhaps there is an upside to the leaking. As the businessdesk’s David Parkin put it, “no surprises was just what the jittery City needed.” And if there’s one thing that the leaking made sure of, there were definitely no surprises.