He had brought his five-year-old daughter, Fatima, who was very ill, from Basra. He told me he thought she had only days to live and that Umm Qasr was his last chance to save her. The position in Basra, he said, was very grim, with many bombings and killings. The only water available was that from the river provided by the government.There is a lot of anger toward Westerners in Umm Qasr, triggered by bitter disappointment at their “liberation”. They feel they have been given false expectations and are scared by the breakdown in social order in the town.

I saw no obvious Allied presence and the normal structures of schools, government and police has disappeared. But the people are hopeful for a future without Saddam Hussein. However bad the situation today, they told me, it was better than under Saddam’s regime. Patrick Nicholson is a communicator with Cafod’s Emergency Response Support Team. Domestic politics, which has been on the backburner since the war in Iraq began, will return to the fore on Wednesday when Gordon Brown presents his most testing Budget since becoming Chancellor. The Tories will accuse Mr Brown of using the war to provide cover for unpalatable announcements that he would have had to make anyway. For the second time in five months, the Chancellor will have to cut his growth forecasts and raise his forecast of government borrowing. Last November, Mr Brown predicted growth of between 2.5 per cent and 3 per cent this year, which is likely to be scaled down by half a percentage point.

The £20bn borrowing he forecast is expected to soar to about £30bn.Although the Iraq crisis undoubtedly added to economic uncertainty, Mr Brown is well aware that blaming everything on the war would not carry credibility in the City. I do not, therefore, expect him to announce a further dollop of money for the conflict on top of the £3bn he has already allocated.Despite the bad headlines his revised forecasts may bring, the Chancellor will sound remarkably upbeat. He will blame the changes since November on weaker than expected global growth and the fall in the stock market. He will rightly take comfort – and not a little personal pleasure – from Britain performing stronger than France and Germany and the economy growing twice as fast as the eurozone.Fittingly, given the political divisions over the war, Britain is performing more like the United States than Europe.