As Alistair Darling, the chancellor, on Tuesday produced a mini-Budget to act as a sticking plaster over the gaping political wound left by the 10p tax fiasco, some Whitehall insiders wondered how his Treasury officials allowed him to be so badly beaten up by the voters and his own backbenchers in the first place.

“Its been blindingly obvious for the last 12 to 15 months that Gordon Brown, the previous chancellor, had left a ticking time bomb in the room and it needed to be defused,” says one insider. “It’s inconceivable that Treasury people didn’t identify the losers from the 10p tax change – they normally do that automatically. They should have warned Darling when he took over. If they didn’t they are deeply culpable. They should have started working out solutions in September.”