Of all those unpleasant headlines of the past week it was perhaps the least lurid – the resignation of Alice Mahon – that should worry Labour party chiefs the most. Ms Mahon, like most on the party’s left, stayed loyal but watchful during the Blair premiership, hoping that Labour would “come home” under Brown and once again be the party she had joined. In many ways these MPs were the conscience of the party under Tony Blair, not many in number, but passionate in argument. When, far from tacking back towards port, Labour under Gordon Brown seemed intent on continuing the New Labour “project”, Ms Mahon snapped. “I was naive enough to think that when Blair went we would get a change of direction. But it was just wishful thinking. The thing is that Brown really believes in neoliberalism. Things are getting worse in the party, not better,” she explains to Neil Clark on page 31.

Mr Blair’s “big tent” came with an unwritten pact. The left, realising that the Tory alternative to Mr Blair was worse, and tossed titbits such as the minimum wage or hunting bills, allowed the prime minister a relatively trouble-free life. (We refer here to the parliamentary left. Others, the New Statesman included, did their best to cause him many headaches.) But with Mr Blair gone, and Mr Brown offering little to the left, the pact is void. And that should worry party managers. To win back disenchanted voters on both wings simultaneously is an uphill task indeed. With rightist voters deserting to David Cameron’s Tories, and left wingers sitting on their hands, Mr Brown will be in trouble on polling day.

Did Alastair Darling’s Budget help? Did he provide the clear red water that might suggest the government is beginning to recover both its confidence and its sense of purpose? Ministers should remember that the best way to get out of the recession is to do what Labour should wish to do anyway: put money into the hands of the poor (who will spend it) and stimulate activity in the public sector with new programmes providing jobs and raising morale. These moves would also be politically astute, as voters have had enough of seeing money go to bankers and not to them. Of course, the Chancellor also had to show that borrowing would be repaid and provide reassurance that sterling would not fall further (although of late it has steadied and has, if anything, risen slightly).

So, did Mr Darling rise to the occasion? This was no voter-friendly splurge (we can pretty safely assume that there won’t be a general election this year). Indeed, even before the Chancellor spoke, the prospects were bleak. Mr Darling was forced to announce record borrowing levels, a projected deficit of £175bn, an expected shrinkage of the economy by 3.5 per cent this year and unemployment already up to 2.1 million. But he did provide some modest redistributive cheer for the party. Help for pensioners and the long-term youth unemployed was coupled with a new 50 per cent top rate of tax for those on incomes above £150,000 a year and curbs on their pension tax relief. Not enough, perhaps, to persuade Ms Mahon to reapply for a party card – but it was a start.

But was that start sufficient? At Prime Minister’s Questions, minutes before Mr Darling stood up at the despatch box, Mr Cameron referred to the Budget the Chancellor was about to deliver as being on “this day of judgement”. That may have been a little biblical, but this could well have been Labour’s last Budget. With the party consistently behind in the polls by a wide margin, and with the Damian McBride emails having provoked disgust among the voting public – aimed partly at the political class as a whole, yes, but also more specifically at Labour – there was much riding on it.

The precedents are not good, unfortunately. There was Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget” of 1909, but in recent times the last occasion a chancellor’s production of the battered red briefcase was widely credited with changing voters’ minds was back in 1970, when Roy Jenkins took much of the blame for Harold Wilson’s defeat – having delivered what was considered an unduly penny-pinching Budget.

Throughout Mr Darling’s speech, there was precious little levity. He talked of “tough decisions” but “fair decisions”, of a “sensible pathway”. “There are no quick fixes,” he said, as he stood framed by Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, seated and unsmiling behind him. They heard him in silence, but the Labour benches cheered him handsomely when Mr Darling was done. That extra 5 per cent tax may seem a very modest increase, but its effect on Labour morale may be somewhat greater. After a series of disasters for the government, it is at least a step in the right direction.

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