The leader of the free world came before us yesterday and, lo, he was invincible. He was supremely confident, brazenly all-knowing, right about everything. He went to Washington as Gordon Brown and returned as Goliath. Surely someone should alert passport control. I’m not sure what he’s on – monetary steroids, fiscal Viagra? – but it might be illegal. I do not think that I have ever seen him quite so full of himself. It was impressive but also slightly worrying, in the same way that you can’t help but feel it’s all a bit freaky when you see a muscle-bound Mr Universe type flexing one of those biceps that looks like someone has sewn a football into his upper arm.

Every Goliath has to have his David and so it was. David (now called Dave, obviously) was there, on the opposition front bench with his slingshot. He and his little friend Boy George watched warily as Goliath told us about his G20 summit. Dave put a stone in his slingshot. He criticised Goliath for insisting that our economic woes began elsewhere. “He’s said it started in America so many times it’s starting to sound ridiculous,” he sniped as Goliath pulled his face into a grimace.

Dave kept on dancing. “Isn’t it the case that Labour’s borrowing bombshell will soon become a tax bombshell?” he said. “Everyone knows you are planning a Christmas tax giveaway but tax cuts should be for life, not just for Christmas.”

Dave’s crowd cheered but it must be said that Dave’s words carried no power. It was as if, in his slingshot, he had not a stone but a dandelion puffball that, when fired, just evaporated into feathery nothings. Goliath did not even have to use his shield (for his chest is bionic now). He got out his great clunking fist and slugged away. Dave was a ditherer, a hypocrite and an ignoramus. Dave doesn’t even know what the problems are (this year inflation, next year deflation), much less the solutions that, as everyone in the world except Dave knew (he actually said that), was monetary policy combined with fiscal action!

Goliath was giving all the Tories a good kicking now, shouting: “Wrong!” over and over again. Then, energised by his own incredible rightness, he pummelled away about how the Tories were not fit for opposition, unBritish, talked down the pound and had no respect for anyone, not even Mrs Thatcher. It was a mauling. I waited for Goliath to be struck by a fatal blow, for that is how the story should end, but I waited in vain.

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