Labour is nowhere in the political battle over the deficit, as it deserves to be. It is both responsible for that horrific debt and has no plausible strategy to deal with it. True, Alistair Darling and Lord Mandelson have prevailed in their battle to make Gordon mention "cuts" occasionally, and now talk with freedom themselves about the need for budget savings. But it is much too little, much too late. Labour will not win this argument at the election. If it really is all about the economy, stupid, then the party is already sunk.

So Brown must rely on raw politics, rather than economics; on suspicion rather than statistics; on cultivating fear of the Tories rather than parading Labour's record. And one cannot fault the sheer cheek of his chosen attack. What could be more counter-intuitive than to present the Tories as the enemies of the middle class? The party of Thatcherism, the blue rinse, Essex Man, the "property-owning democracy" and the "middling sort", suddenly turning on its own? Ludicrous, surely? But that is precisely what Gordon is claiming.