It’s a good thing that Alistair Darling is so dull or else we’d all have run from the chamber screaming. The news wasn’t bad, it was appalling. If Edvard Munch were painting today, he’d have to revise his most famous work The Scream to give his figure beetling bootblack eyebrows and a stream of astronomically long figures of debt coming out of his open mouth.

Actually, if Munch had been alive and listening to the Budget, he might have ended up slumped forward, face down in his fiercely pessimistic palette. Mr Darling has that effect: there are South American frogs out there that are jealous of his ability to stun. When I was in the chamber listening, I knew things were awful but such was the soporific power of Mr Darling that I almost didn’t care — which is, of course, just as well.

I’ve now had enough time to recover to give you the highlights. Er, actually, that’s it. There were no highlights, only lowlights. How low can we go? Well, the best news of the day was that our exports may be down 14 per cent but that Germany’s have plummeted 21 per cent and Japan’s 45 per cent. Gordon Brown, sitting there with his arms, legs and probably fingers crossed, nodded. He loves these comparative lists in which we always win.

Mr Darling’s family — wife, mother, son — were there to watch. They stayed awake but, don’t forget, they have had practice (or, possibly, access to an antidote). After the cheering news on exports, Mr Darling gave us the desperate sounding debt figures to a Tory soundtrack of “Oh! Oh! Oh!” I think it was when he told us that it wasn’t going to stabilise until 2015-16 that I began to wish that I had access to my very own tranquilliser gun.

Budget 2009: A step-by-step guide

Alistair Darling has revealed the steps he believes will drag Britain out of the worst economic slump since 1946

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• Alistair Darling's Budget tax hike for the rich sets election battle line

BACKGROUND

• Home sales fears despite stamp duty extension

• Power boost to wind and oil

• Wealthy pension investors hit

• David Cameron bites back at 'fictional' Budget

• Budget 2009: speech in full

Related Links

• Public borrowing and unemployment soar

• Chancellor reads last rites over new Labour

History will record that the death of new Labour came at 1pm on April 22, 2009, when Mr Darling said the words “the new tax rate will be 50 per cent”. Tony Blair — can it really be that he was still Prime Minister only two years ago? — will have a wry chuckle over that. Then he will have to take a call from a furious Cherie. The nouveaux riches Blairs will be among the losers of this Budget. That will make Gordon flash one of his funny peculiar grins (which surely Munch would capture in an equally spooky rendering called The Smile).

The whole event had the feeling of a session at the dentist, something that had to be got through, with Mr Darling acting as the novocaine. But at least he droned with dignity. He sat down to half-hearted cheers from Labour backbenchers. Even the front bench looked like a clan meeting of The Grims. Mr Brown must have wished fervently to be transported back to his G20 day of triumph: no wonder he prefers the global stage these days.

The really bad news for Mr Brown, though, came next because David Cameron was on stonkingly good form. At first he seemed a bit shouty but then he hit his stride, ripping into Mr Brown’s judgment, his errant predictions and “callous” boasts.

“What planet are these people on?” he cried. “They sit there, running out of money, running out of moral authority, running out of time. You have to ask what on earth is the point of another 14 months of this Government of the living dead?”

It seems that after The Scream comes The Savaging. On this form, Mr Cameron is dangerous.

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