This afternoon was a fulcrum moment for the government, for the Conservatives and for the future of Britain. The battle lines of the next election are now clear. For all the talk of an end to isms, and predictions of the death of ideology, there is still a large and defining divide between right and left.
New Labour presents itself to the country as the party of public services.
It has never before so boldly made the centre-left arguments for collective provision funded by taxation. In their first two years in power, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown bound themselves into an eye-wateringly tight spending straitjacket for reasons which had as much to do with politics as they did with economics. Haunted by the fear that economic calamity would shipwreck them as it did every previous Labour government, desperate above all else to retain the confidence of the markets, the chancellor's favourite squeeze was prudence. She was not entirely jilted this afternoon. Mr Brown told us that he would be repaying even more of the national debt than had been forecast.