David Cameron called it a day of judgment for Gordon Brown’s government – the moment Labour had returned Britain to the 1970s. As the bad news and the red ink cascaded from Alistair Darling’s Budget, it was hard to gainsay the Tory leader.

A recession that could be the deepest since the second world war; record peacetime public borrowing; and unemployment heading for 3m: what was it that the prime minister used to say about boom and bust?