It was a Christmas play like no other. Alistair Darling had cast himself as Santa Claus. This was, to say the least, a challenge for a man who is more wooden than Pinocchio’s nose.

Still, he came dressed for the part, his hair as white as the North Pole and clutching a brand-new socialist swagbag of goodies for all.

He dived into it and came out with fistfuls of cash. He threw them in the air, a £20 billion blizzard of notes, a Christmas giveaway like none other. Everyone was getting some cash, whether they liked it or not. The elves had printed the stuff, Rudolph with his red old Labour nose was delivering it, and we would jolly well spend it. Santa was ordering us to spend, spend, spend.

He was a Santa of the people and a Santa of action. “This is only possible because I am acting,” he said (but not very well, I thought). Still, he bulldozed on with his Santa Action Plan: slash VAT, tax the rich, give to the poor, threaten the banks. It was as if Robin Hood had got himself a red suit and a grotto and, high on Red Bull and John Maynard Keynes, had gone to town.

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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But giveaways, like anything, can get boring after a while, especially when Santa has a monotone. “But I want to do more,” said Santa Darling, although, behind him, even the most loyal elf was looking a bit sleepy. Mr Darling tried to look joyous – his “ho-ho-ho” really is only “so-so-so” – but only managed to look like he’d eaten a dodgy prawn.

It is Santa’s duty to be upbeat and nothing seemed to get him down. One trillion in debt! Yahoo! It would be paid off soon enough. The good news is that our financial Armageddon is not going to be as bad as everyone else’s. Ours is going to be “shorter and shallower”. Rejoice, for we are the lucky ones.

The Tories glared at Santa Darling throughout his extraordinary performance. As he spoke – and the red ink seeped into the Commons green carpet – the Tory front bench whispered to one another. In the corner, behind the Speaker’s chair, a Tory financial whiz-kid type named Brooks Newmark tapped his BlackBerry frantically and passed notes down to George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, who then scribbled amendments to his speech.

Mr Osborne arose to a roar. “The Chancellor has just announced the largest amount of borrowing ever undertaken by a British government in the entire history of this country,” he cried. “To pay for it he has placed a huge unexploded tax bombshell timed to go off underneath the future economic recovery.”

He pointed a long, crooked, Scrooge-like finger at Mr Darling, who pretended to ignore him. “Stability has gone out of the window. Prudence is dead,” intoned George, who seemed to be playing Ebenezer Scrooge as some kind of beat poet. “Labour has done it again. Massive borrowing. Rising unemployment. Tax giveaways for Christmas paid for by tax rises for life!”

This was Scrooge as we have not seen him before. Furious. Doom-monger. Excoriating. Santa Darling began to glare back. I could almost hear him thinking: “I always knew that Scrooge was a Tory! How dare he even set foot in my grotto!”

Not only was he in the grotto, he was trashing it. This was Mr Osborne’s best ever performance. You could feel the fury, and his voice, which is often as squeaky as a mouse, did not let him down. Scrooge taunted Santa. “The choice at the next election could not be clearer, a record borrowing binge – a record borrowing binge – and a lifetime of tax rises under Labour or fiscal sanity and lower taxes under the Conservatives.”

The cheers for Scrooge (what would Dickens say?) were deafening as he sat down. Santa Darling got up and was more emotional than I have ever seen him (he actually used a few hand gestures). “He did not even mention pensioners,” Santa cried, but, even as he spoke, the stain of red debt spread over the carpet even further.

We were all, truly, seeing red.

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