Mark Stuart: Be brave, Mr Darling and put the country before party interest

In an ideal world of course, a Budget should not be held immediately prior to an election. No-one, it seems has heeded Roy Jenkins' pronouncement on Norman Lamont's ill-judged 1992 pre-election Budget that "no Chancellor must ever be put in this position again".

Back in 1992, Lamont introduced a 20p tax band for the first 2,000 of income, despite concerns from John Major about the state of the public finances. Part of Lamont's aim was overtly political: to wrong-foot Labour, who had been expecting a straight income tax cut. In that sense, it worked. The economically illiterate Neil Kinnock was left flailing.

Lamont had presented Labour with an impossible dilemma: did they support a measure that would help the low paid, or vote against it? In the end, John Smith's Shadow Budget opted for higher taxes, which put off middle-income voters, and Labour lost the election.

Politically, Lamont had succeeded. But the Tory Chancellor had also overruled his officials, producing lower forecasts for government borrowing than were sensible. He was wrong, and we all – quite literally – paid for it after the 1992 election in the shape of higher taxes.

As you well know, Alistair, not all Conservative Chancellors of the Exchequer have misjudged their pre-election Budgets. Wouldn't you give your eye teeth right now to be able to emulate two former Tory Chancellors – Sir Geoffrey Howe (1979-1983) and Nigel Lawson (1983-1989) – both of whom brought government borrowing firmly under control?

Howe's pre-election Budget in 1983 cut national insurance charges to help British business, but there was no pre-election giveaway. He behaved responsibly. As The Sun put it: "Like a stripper in the Bible Belt, Sir Geoffrey Howe had probably gone as far as he could." Given the dire state of the public finances, the sort of straight pre-election inducements announced by Nigel Lawson in the 1987 Budget – a 2p reduction in the basic rate of income tax, together with no increases in the duty on cigarettes and alcohol – are simply out of the question. Lawson could afford it; you can't.

Nor will you buy into the myth put about by George Osborne that past Labour Chancellors have automatically led the country to the verge of bankruptcy. Some have, but that was certainly not true of Roy Jenkins, whose "two years' hard slog" from 1968 to 1970 balanced the nation's books. When it came to the eve of the 1970 election, Jenkins resisted the temptation to hold a give-away Budget, which he regarded as "a vulgar piece of economic management". Another Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey (1974-1979), also took the necessary decisions on public spending, as did Tory Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke in the period 1993-1997.

However, the Labour Party lost the 1970 election and the one in 1979, while the Conservatives lost in 1997. It seems that the demands of being a good Chancellor mean putting the interests of the country above the narrow political interests of your party.

If you really mean to put the needs of your country first, Alistair, then you have to 'fess up, and admit that your growth forecasts are wildly optimistic. It follows therefore that your plan to cut the deficit in half within four years is simply not credible. Further cuts are urgently required.

Up until now, all the pain of this recession has been shouldered by the private sector. Wage freezes and I'm afraid, at least 10 per cent job cuts are now required across the public sector if we are going to tackle the truly enormous fiscal deficit. Make this truly a "Budget for Recovery" by scrapping your planned increase in National Insurance Contributions. Take heed of the advice you received in that other letter – the one last Thursday from David Frost, the Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce – which rightly points out that putting up these contributions amounts to "a tax on jobs".

Of course, you need to raise taxes from somewhere to help balance the books. Might I suggest abolishing the higher rate of tax relief for pensions contributions? Last year, you tinkered with this, restricting it to incomes over 150,000. If you really believe in "Fairness for All", as your party's election slogan says, then that means everyone should only be entitled to 20 per cent relief and not 40 per cent.

Your predecessor as Chancellor will also like this policy, because it will put the Conservatives on the spot, forcing them to answer the question, do they really support a tax perk that benefits the wealthy?

But don't let the Prime Minister crawl over every piece of this Budget. In the last year or so, you have stood up to the bully next door, and established a reputation in the international money markets as the last voice of sanity left in a discredited Government.

What you need, therefore, Alistair, is to emulate what Sir Geoffrey Howe did in 1983, namely delivering "an electioneering budget of the modern sort ... meant not to tickle us in the pocket, but in our sense of virtue". Fairness and fiscal rectitude should be your watchwords. Put country before party. Can you rise to the call?

Yours, Mark

Mark Stuart is a political historian from York who has written biographies of John Smith and Douglas Hurd.