The most expensive by election bribe in History

So even though we are in a tight financial situation we can afford to borrow an extra £2.7b to put right the mess over the 10p tax fiasco.

I quite like Danny Finkelstein's comments

This is surely the end of any possibility that Labour can run a black hole campaign against the Tories in the next election. They've just shown they don't mind borrowing almost £3 billion for entirely political reasons.

I can't help feeling though that this is just going to create further problems and as Adam Boulton says

Brown and Darling have had to climb down on the key features of their last two budgets - income tax, capital gains tax and taxation for non-doms.
As inflation rises and house prices drop - will the voters still trust them to run the economy?