Self-confessed budget briefer Damian McBride makes a fair point on today’s events:

“As for the Standard themselves, if the Treasury choose to divulge that level of information and do so too early in the day, what are they meant to say? “Hold on, I think you’re telling me too much too soon”. Of course not. And it’s the telling of too much too soon that’s caused the problem – not the long-standing arrangements that I’ve described, or even the Standard’s cock-up in posting their splash online –  so I hope no-one in the Treasury will think about abandoning those arrangements as a consequence, and I hope no-one at the Standard is in any trouble tonight.”

At the end of the day it was the Treasury that let the cat out of the bag. Of course the Standard didn’t mean to break the embargo, but the buck stops with those chose to brief out the budget in the first place. Something like this was always going to happen in the internet age…