The Sketch: The backbenchers were bedazzled, but what would Prudence have made of it?

It's very important not to believe the Chancellor; you'd go mad otherwise. If you took it all at face value and relied on it all coming true you'd wear a goofy, medicated smile and carry a daffodil. The world would have cherryade fountains. And your suit sleeves would tie up at the back.

Essentially, Gordon Brown is out to double public spending. People don't seem to have quite realised that. He inherited a spending level of £270bn a year, he's going up to £511bn. Doubling it. The peculiar sorcery of the Chancellor has somehow enabled him to conceal this by boasting about it.

He's embarked on his cornucopian increase in public spending while at the same time claiming "a margin for prudence even on the most cautious case, even on the most cautious assumptions".

Oh really? How about Iraq? Or the price of oil doubling? Or public sector inflation pushing up interest rates by 50 per cent? No, these ugly, hairy assumptions would have a way with Prudence that you couldn't describe in a sketch.

Nonetheless, his spending plans were cheered to the rafters by his bedazzled backbenches. And Tony Blair's smile became, at times, a little tauter than usual.

There was a parliamentary moment which should give Mr Brown pause. In the middle of his discourse on the quid he became brutally specific about the pro quo. The resources must be matched by reform, he said. New inspectorates would check where all this money was going. A silence behind him suddenly opened up.

"Failing institutions will be dealt with early and decisively." Poorly performing schools, colleges, social services, local authorities to be taken over and their managers rooted out. The silence deepened.

The Chancellor should be careful of his Bible reading: "To him who hath more shall be given; to those who hath not, even that little they have shall be taken away."

I can only comfort Old Labour by suggesting that this historic experiment may not come to pass, if for no other reason than that Gordon Brown says it will.

Michael Howard did as well as any shadow Chancellor of the current Tory party could do. He filled his blunderbuss and let it off broadly speaking in the right direction. Spending on education, health and law 'n' order had all gone up under this Government, but the results were all worse than they were. "Same old promises, same old failures," he said. He was just getting into his stride.

Taxes would go up, he said. Productivity had fallen. The books had been cooked, a la Enron. Cancer drugs were being distributed to Labour-leaning constituencies. House starts had fallen to their lowest level since 1924. And the inspectorates Mr Brown had announced would lead to the greatest increase in centralised bureaucracy Britain had ever known.

Well, who knows?

Ed Balls, the sorcerer's apprentice, gave his customary briefing behind the press gallery. In future the Government was going to give a full, regular, transparent, easily accessible account of public service performance against every target set so that we all knew exactly where we were.

"We are driven always to be as open and transparent as possible," he told us.

It was the one good laugh we had all day.