So when Gordon Brown's advisers grope for ways of using the two years left before a general election to extricate the Government from its difficulties, they have to ask the right question. What were the tipping points that brought us low, and how can we retreat from them in a significant way? As the £2.7 billion tax fix, class warfare in Crewe and the PM's pledges to get on with the job demonstrate, tinkering won't matter.
Only a drastic rollback of the frontiers of the state - on taxes, spending and intrusive regulation - can set in motion a pull-back from the tipping points that Labour has arrived at.
It is not a U-turn of which this Prime Minister is capable.