´óÏó´«Ã½

It was billed as a historic Budget, and in terms of its superlatives of borrowing, it didn't disappoint. But how will history judge today's astonishing reckoning?

It has the potential to use Britain's deep borrowing pockets to dig it out of recession swiftly and back onto a sustainable growth path - though it seems quite hard to find anyone who believes that other than people in or very near the UK Government.

Alternatively, it has the potential to turn the corner for the British economy and for Britain in terms of its place in the economic pecking order, burdened by debt for a generation, and turning its back on its reputation as a low tax magnet for the world's super-rich.

It has the potential - no it's stronger than that, it probably will turn the whole terms of the debate on the role of the state in Britain, and how much the public finances can sustain.

Because of that, the stresses and strains of much tighter public spending have the potential to drive a wedge between Westminster and Holyrood. That battle has been coming for some months, and today only served to ratchet it up. This could be crucial to shaping Scotland's constitutional future.

That's despite all the evidence from this Budget and from other data - including today's separate figures on Scotland's gross domestic product, unemployment and retail - that the British and Scottish economy are ever more intertwined.

But in the search for history-in-the-making, there's another facet of this Budget that might get overlooked in the political row, the taxation initiatives and the talk about jobs and greenery.

I was struck by Alistair Darling's explicit setting out of the ways the British economy needs to change. Necessarily, it can't rely so heavily on its finance sector, so he was setting out the areas in which he thinks it can develop deeper strengths, which are allied to his business support choices.

"In future," he said, "the sources of our growth will be more varied - and we need to ensure we play to our country's strengths.

"It will increasingly come from an expansion in investment by businesses in the industries of the future, such as low-carbon, advanced manufacturing and communications.

"These industries, together, are as important to the British economy as the financial services sector."

So in a Budget long on big, scary borrowing figures heading out towards the horizon, and short on other visions of the future, it was striking that at least this one part of the speech sets out a new direction for Britain.

Whether Alistair Darling will have a role in shaping that future from Downing Street... well, the election campaign starts here.