The Chancellor highlighted his help for families in yesterday's Budget, but few will end up better off as a result of the changes. In fact, a new freeze on inheritance tax increases could end up costing some families a lot more than they may make through the more popular moves such as increasing tax credits and the stamp duty holiday.

It is not often that the Leader of the Opposition applauds a government's Budget as "genius". Yet as he sat across from Alistair Darling and listened to the Chancellor deliver his main sweetener, stamp duty relief for first-time buyers, it was the word an exasperated David Cameron chose to describe the measure. The mocking praise, delivered as he threw his hands up in incredulity, barely masked his frustration at the Government's decision to cherrypick a policy he said his party had backed three years ago.

Alistair Darling turned the screw on the better off today as the battle lines were drawn for the General Election.

Outlook Be careful what you wish for. Alistair Darling will be delighted that government borrowing now looks set to come in well below the forecasts he made three months ago in his pre-Budget report – such revisions have generally been the other way round with this Government in recent times. Still, now the Chancellor has a tricky decision to make: does he spend his windfall next week on Budget sweeteners for swing voters, or leave it in the bank as a downpayment on deficit reduction?

The school day should be lengthened to help "latchkey kids" who are left alone after school while parents work, a study on deprivation recommends.

Conservative plans to slash inheritance tax would effectively abolish the tax "for practical purposes", shows research by the leading accountants, Grant Thornton, for The Independent. In the proposals by the shadow chancellor George Osborne, unveiled in 2007, the threshold would be raised from the present £325,000 to £1m.

When Alistair Darling replaced Gordon Brown as Chancellor in 2007, he was confident that his long-standing partnership with the new Prime Minister would stand him in good stead. He knew there would have to be compromises over his Budgets and major decisions with the man who had occupied the post for 10 years; after all, there is always tension between the occupants of 10 and 11 Downing Street. What Mr Darling did not expect was that he would be rubbished in anonymous briefings to the media by people in the Brown inner circle of which he had believed he was a part. The Chancellor is a team player who doesn't have a burning desire to be the captain and doesn't expect team-mates to kick lumps out of each other.