Nigel Lawson was famously accused of being a “one-club golfer” because he relied only on interest rates to keep the economy on the fairway. Not Gordon Brown. Having found himself in a massive financial bunker, he is using everything in his bag, including two wedges and a sand iron. He has even borrowed Mervyn King’s rescue club.

Mr Brown has bailed out the banks and browbeaten the Bank of England into slashing interest rates. Now he is promising not only increased public spending but tax cuts as well. That only leaves bread and circuses to come.

What has surprised the spectators is not merely the impressive range of equipment Mr Brown is using. It is the way he is playing. Surely, when you are off your game, you play safe. Instead, Mr Brown is letting rip.

Those who lived through the recession of the 1980s will remember that the Government then seemed to do everything it could to make it more painful. Cod liver oil is good for you, said Nanny Thatcher, even if it tastes disgusting. You will thank me in the end, she said, and many did.

Tough love was also the medicine prescribed for Asian countries that got into financial trouble in the 1990s. They were lectured by Western governments who told them to let their banks fail, cut government spending and balance the books. No wonder some are feeling a bit sore now.

As Mr Brown says; “This is no time for conventional old thinking, or tired old orthodoxies.” The tired old orthodoxy has been replaced by a new orthodoxy, which turns out to be the even older orthodoxy of John Maynard Keynes: when you’re in an economic hole, you dig another one to create jobs. You tear up those borrowing targets and spend your way out of the slump. Everyone is now agreed. Goodbye Prudence; hello Charity. Out goes the cod liver oil; in comes the spoonful of sugar.

But, just a minute. The argument seems to be that the hangover from our debt-fuelled spending binge over the past 15 years is so bad that we need something to take the pain away. We need some hair of the dog. If we can just get through today, we will go back on the wagon, honest. Doesn’t all the evidence suggest, however, that having another tipple just makes it worse in the long run?

Maybe. But nobody’s listening. The new orthodoxy has swept the world from Washington to Beijing. From Gordon Brown to David Cameron. It is no good suggesting a game of tennis. Everyone is playing golf. It is now just a matter of club selection.

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