Budget Day cartoons…

©morland

Plenty of red box wielding Darlings in today’s papers.
With Peter Brookes doing no less than two Budget cartoons (on the front page as well as op-ed), there was no point in my doing a third of that kind for the Budget supplement, so I went for a stylistically rather different idea for my piece accompanying the sketch.

Peter’s front page works very well, summing up the essence of the budget with a plastic bag full of drink being presented by Darling as the red box. Simple but effective. That one is unfortunately not available online, but his op-ed cartoon is.
Those of you who watched BBC’s coverage of the glorious budget event might have noticed Peter’s contribution there too. A piece preceding the speech showed Evan Davies presenting his predictions for the budget surrounded by life-size cartoons.

The “rabbit out of a hat” metaphor invariably crops up in cartoons following the budget, and this year was no exception – despite the absence of any such rabbits. That in itself became a reason to use it I guess.
Dave Brown in the Indy rather beautifully shows the bear(market) ruining the Chancellor’s trick.
Guardian’s Steve Bell makes the Chancellor himself the somewhat pathetic rabbit.

Garland in the Telegraph turns to old sporting metaphors, and although the ball is confusingly large it’s undoubtedly a rather poignant description of the Brown/Darling double act.

Matt has no less than four pocket cartoons on the subject.

Paul Thomas in the Daily Express, picks up on the hilariously idiotic heckling from Ed Balls (see below).