Hey presto! With the last announcement in the last minute of his last Budget speech Gordon Brown has sought to re-write the history of the Brown decade at the Treasury and to wrong-foot the Tories for the next decade.
This chancellor's been called many things - some good, some bad - but rarely has anyone called him a tax cutter or a tax reformer.
His hope is that today's speech will change that. No chance, say his enemies pointing out that what "the Gord giveth the Gord taketh away". And it's true that he had no money to spend today.
Had it not been for these tax changes we would have been focussing on the pain caused by the tightest public spending figures for more than a decade.
Instead Gordon Brown delivered a Budget that reminded me of the great pre-election tax cutting Budgets of old. A leadership election looms. Then, who knows, could he be tempted for an early dash to the polls?
I'm feeling positively nostalgic. Today felt like one of those pre-election budgets in the Tory years where tax cuts were announced with a flourish. There is, though, no overall giveaway. This budget is revenue neutral. It cuts personal tax by around 2 and a half billion pounds - equivalent to about 1p off the basic rate of income tax - paid for by green taxes and tax avoidance measures.
And yet, the chancellor has done something that produced huge roars on the Labour benches and awkward gasps on the Tory benches. A headline cut in income tax (which the Tories have long dreamed of making) and a headline cut in business taxation.
Which election is Gordon Brown waiting for? The Tory leader joked that it was the leadership election.
This is the budget of a Chancellor with his eye firmly on moving to Number Ten. He felt under pressure to be seen to be heading off the challenges from David Cameron and, as a result, from the Blairite wing of the Labour Party.
Just one question - will it work?
...we have the answer. Scrapping the 10p rate saves him 8.6 billion whilst cutting the basic rate costs 9.6 billion. Net cost around a billion pounds. How's that paid for - by scrapping empty property relief.
Clever hey?
And - hey presto - there's the rabbit out of the hat.
A 2p cut in income tax. Plus three billion more for families and pensioners.
The issue, of course, is how it's being paid for, as Gordon says there's no cut in taxation as a whole. My colleague Evan Davis is next to me checking the Red Book now to find out the answer.
Spending one billion pounds on increasing the Working Tax Credit will give more money to poorer families in work, will reduce what's called the "couples penalty" - the fact that there's a financial benefit to staying single.
Brown rejects "representations" i.e. Tory policy to tax domestic flights - as they would only achieve in a year what his Climate Change Levy achieved in a week.
Although the 2% cut in Corporation Tax is 1% less than the Tory promise this week neither plan involves an overall cut in business taxation. They involve restructuring the tax by cutting tax reliefs - the Tories all if them, Brown fewer of them.
Gordon Brown's old friends "asset sales" (what Harold Macmillan once derided as "selling off the family silver") and "efficiency savings" are being used to try to get a lot politically when he only has a little economically to play with.
That's one tick on - a tribute to "the civil servants or should I say comrades" who helped with the Budget.
And so far no mention of Stalin.
Your handy budget check list for Gordon's last budget...
Rhetoric
• A gag about cuts to the civil service a day after the former head of the civil service laid into him
• No gag about Stalin who was, after all, a mass murderer
• No mention of 5 years plans
• Much talk about the economic success of the past 10 years
Shooting Tory foxes
• Announcement on cut to corporation tax rates as called for by George Osbourne
• More help for poorer families helping couples in particular
• Green taxes on gas guzzlers
Attempts to embarrass the Tories
• Rejection of "representations" to let families take only one foreign holiday a year
• Rejection of "representations" to give a tax break to married couples
Rabbits out of the hat
• A little something for pensioners
