What a difference a few months make! In the summer Gordon Brown was on the ropes. Over the past couple of months he has picked up a thoroughly undeserved reputation as the ‘saviour of the world economy.’

Brown has embraced Keynesian policies wholeheartedly, without explaining his U-turn. His solution to our economic ills is to hurl money at them. ‘Never apologise, never explain’, seems to be his motto. So what is making Brown look good? The Tories, that’s what.

George Osborne has set out his stall to deal with the crisis. He wants to abolish stamp duty on sale of houses worth less than £250,000. (Stamp duty has been put on hold by Darling since the crisis started to bite. It hasn’t succeeded in stimulating the housing market.) He wants to raise the threshold on inheritance tax to £1m. And he wants to cut corporation tax from 28-25%. Come rain, shine, hail or high water the Tories have the same economic policies – cut taxes for the rich! Apart from anything else, the rich spend a smaller portion of their income than poor people, so tax cuts for them will be less effective in stimulating the economy.

The Tories have come out against ‘unfunded’ tax cuts. This means tax cuts in one sector should be matched by tax increases, or cuts in spending elsewhere. But this is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It will not stimulate the economy.

Osborne drones on that, “Spending our way out of recession will not work.” In this he is at odds with some traditionally very conservative economists. Samuel Brittan, writing in the Financial Times, comments that, “Too few people understand that a government’s budget is not like a family’s or a company’s. It is precisely when the private sector is cutting down and saving that the government needs to spend more.”

What do the Tories propose? Brown may be panicking but at least it looks as if he is doing something. Cameron has torn up the commitment to keep to Labour’s spending plans if and when he becomes Prime Minister. He is repositioning his Party as one advocating cuts in government spending to pay for tax cuts for the rich. That was Thatcher’s response to the recession of 1980. As a result Britain went into recession earlier and deeper than anywhere else in the western world. Thatcher was hated by millions for her flinty indifference to the hardship she inflicted on the working class. That is the tradition the Tories are reclaiming.

Osborne continued this theme with his assault on Darling’s pre-budget report, accusing him of "Bringing this country to the verge of bankruptcy" by doubling the national debt and setting up "a huge unexploded tax bombshell timed to go off at the time of the next economic recovery".

It is true that Brown is recklessly hurling money at the crisis. He doesn’t really know what he is doing.  Brown’s horizons don’t really go beyond 2010, the last possible date for an election. We could be looking at 3 million unemployed by then. If so, he won’t be looking like a winner.

It is true that the spending splurge may well not work. Most analysts believe a 2½% cut in prices by cutting VAT is too small a boost to do much to make people go out and spend this Christmas. Brown is building up huge debts – possibly as much as £120bn to be borrowed next year. These sums will have to be repaid one day.