The good news, if you could call it that, was that Alistair Darling owned up to the seismic scale of the bust; the bad that, as we thought, the prospects are truly dire. The pain of the Brown boom will be felt well beyond the recession.

We also got a new set of political dividing lines. After more than a decade when it dared not offend the wealthy, Gordon Brown’s government intends that the most affluent bear the brunt of massive post-election tax increases. It is not quite socialism but neither is it New Labour.