Alistair Darling fired a salvo for Labour’s election campaign in yesterday’s Budget speech, which featured vote-grabbing plans to tax the rich and spare the poor.

The Chancellor announced help for first-time housebuyers by doubling the stamp duty threshold to £250,000, paid for by an extra one per cent on homes over £1m.

Personal tax allowances for the top two per cent of earners with incomes over £100,000 were eroded, while inheritance tax was frozen for four more years.

Mr Darling said 60 per cent of tax hikes would be paid by the richest five per cent, adding: “I believe those who have benefited the most from the strong growth in incomes in past years should now pay their fair share of tax.”

And he scored more political points by announcing a tax agreement with Belize, where non-dom Tory party bank-roller Lord Ashcroft is based.

But £11bn of efficiency savings and an asset sale including the Tote failed to impress many of those who were looking for more substantial plans on how to reduce the borrowing deficit.

Conservative leader David Cameron said: “The biggest risk to the recovery is five more years of this Prime Minister.”

And Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said: “We aren’t better off.

“We are just ever so slightly less worse off.”

There was limited good news for motorists as next month’s scheduled increase in fuel duty was staggered over 10 months, while drinkers and smokers were unsurprised by two per cent and one per cent tax hikes respectively.

Government borrowing levels were marginally down on expectations at £167bn while the Chancellor stood firm on his economic growth predictions, which others claimed were optimistic.

Len Collinson, of north west business group Private Sector Partners, said: “This was a mutton dressed as lamb Budget designed for the election.

“It did not tackle public sector overspending or substantially reduce public sector borrowing.”

The part-nationalised banks, Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland, were ordered to extend an additional £94bn in lending to businesses and a £2bn green fund was announced to finance renewable energy and transport projects.

And the Chancellor extended the guarantee of a job or training for every 18 to 24 year-old after six months out-of-work for another year.

The 2010 Budget is likely to be remembered as a laying of the battle lines for a general election in May.