Alistair Darling knocked down a new Labour totem by raising income taxes for higher earners. The techniques of new Labour, however, were alive and well as part of the decision to do so.

The precise rate at which the new top rate was introduced was the subject of intensive focus-group testing.

This tried-and-tested new Labour method of research concluded that public sympathy for the losers tapered sharply at about the level of a university vice-chancellor’s salary.

Lord Mandelson once said that he was “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich, as long as they pay their taxes”. How much did the Business Secretary know in advance of the top-rate decision? More than most, it seems. While other senior ministers had to wait until yesterday’s Cabinet to learn the details, Lord Mandelson attended several key meetings at which the mini-Budget was discussed. The final decision to proceed was taken at a meeting on Thursday when he and Mr Darling joined the Prime Minister in No 10.

Darling's £1 trillion debt gamble

Alistair Darling stored up big tax rises for the better-paid and huge public spending curbs in his fight against recession. Watch video

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When David Cameron ditched his pledge to match Labour’s spending plans last week, the Prime Minister and Chancellor already knew that they had a U-turn of their own to execute. In a hurried meeting at the British Ambassador’s residence in Washington ten days ago, Mr Brown and Mr Darling had reviewed their options for the Pre-Budget Report in the light of the G20 summit.

With officials present, the two men were careful to talk in broad terms. Alone, they were considering junking a key tenet of new Labour orthodoxy. The idea of a top rate of tax was raised at a “fairly early” stage in the planning of yesterday’s report. But officials calculating its effect regarded the exercise as routine. Senior Treasury civil servants serving under Mr Brown as Chancellor had grown used to working up the top-rate option before budgets, only to see it sacrificed as politically unacceptable before the day arrived.

This time, in the conditions of the strictest secrecy, the option hardened into policy as economic and political factors aligned. The combination of global economic downturn and banking crisis allowed Mr Brown to claim that extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures. Mr Cameron, in anticipation of yesterday’s handouts, set his party against a borrowing-funded tax giveaway last week.

The stage was set for Mr Brown’s next move but senior government figures insisted that the top-rate tax decision was not taken in response to Mr Cameron’s repositioning. Mr Brown’s need to reconnect with core voters before the recession was the main concern. The introduction of the top rate of tax is, as strategists readily admit, as much a symbolic as a practical measure. “It’s about the fact that everyone has to give a little,” said one. Low-paid workers, who lost out as a consequence of Mr Brown’s scrapping of the 10p income tax rate in his last Budget as Chancellor, needed to be reassured that the well-off would share future pain, according to allies of his.

It was not a straightforward or easy decision to set his face against a central article of new Labour faith. Tony Blair, arriving today in Israel for talks in his role as Middle East envoy, is not likely to criticise his successor publicly. It would be strange, however, if he did not reflect on his many discussions with Mr Brown about tax — and their conclusion after the 1992 election defeat that they must quash for good voters’ fears that Labour would tax the rich punitively. Risking ceding to the Tories the chance to champion aspiration in return for a nod to fairness will not seem a wise exchange to some of the architects of the party’s return from the wilderness.

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