The immediate Tory response to the Treasury rethink on foreign profits taxation was succinct, if somewhat brutal: “Another day, another U-turn.”

George Osborne, the shadow chancellor, attacked the “catalogue of cave-ins” by the government. The unravelling of “virtually all” Budget measures under Alistair Darling’s stewardship of Number 11 was creating “damaging uncertainty”, the opposition party asserted on Monday.