Brown has played into the hands of the Tory Bullingdon Boys he loathes

Conservative backbenchers were in  good voice on Monday, and by prearrangement. The whips had sent around the message that there was to be raucous heckling as Alistair Darling read out what used to be called the Autumn Statement. Duly, there were roars of indignation at the Chancellor’s claims that Britain was best-prepared for a downturn, howls of protest as he claimed to have reduced debt. But then this yielded to unexpected quiet as it slowly became clear that Mr Darling’s giveaways included something the Tories would never have dared dream of: the surrender of everything New Labour once stood for.

David Cameron had been at George Osborne’s house the day before, nervously preparing for the surprise tax cut which they suspected was in store. The pre-briefed VAT cut to 15 per cent, they believed, was a softener. They also supposed, wrongly, that Mr Darling would honour the basic New Labour principle of spelling out how he would repay the borrowing. In the event, there was not even an attempt at a payback plan. The Chancellor said he would double the national debt to £1 trillion — and to hell with the consequences. These were the fiscal rules of the credit card thief.

Mr Darling also declared that he would soak the rich — not because it would save the budget, but because they deserved it. They ‘have seen their incomes almost double’, he noted caustically, so it was time to pay up. Here was an irrevocable philosophical break with the past. Tony Blair used to argue that the richest 1 per cent paid almost a quarter of income tax collected — so his attitude was to say ‘thank you’ and try to attract more such people to Britain. Now, Gordon Brown is coming at these Golden Geese with Denis Healey’s old carving knife.