Gordon Brown liked to be known as the Iron Chancellor. His successor Alistair Darling will go down as the flexible one. For weeks, Mr Darling has been insisting that he cannot reopen the Budget despite the mounting row over the abolition of the 10p tax rate. But faced with the prospect of further humiliation at the hands of the voters - not to mention rebellious Labour MPs - he delivered a snap mini-Budget. Suddenly the Chancellor found that, after all, he had scope to borrow an extra £2.7 billion pounds to provide an extra £120 this year for every basic rate taxpayer. The much-vaunted prudence and fiscal rectitude of New Labour's early years is now a distant memory. With the polls pointing to defeat in the Crewe and Nantwich by-election on May 22, mutiny in Labour's ranks and even questions over whether a Budget defeat in the Commons would force Mr Brown to quit, Mr Darling and the Prime Minister put electoral survival first. If Labour manage to hold on to the late Gwyneth Dunwoody's seat - and until now the Tories were increasingly confident of overturning her 7,000 majority - it may well be down to the the Chancellor's emergency package. It is likely to be even more costly to the taxpayer than the famous electoral "bribe" of another Labour government. In 1966, faced with a difficult by-election in Hull North, Harold Wilson prevailed upon his Minister of Transport Barbara Castle to sanction the building of the Humber bridge. She duly travelled to Hull and promised the constituents their bridge - swinging the marginal seat Labour's way. The Conservative shadow chancellor, George Osborne, said the Chancellor's statement sounded "more like a cynical press release in a by-election campaign". He said the Government was making the announcement "not because of any sense of guilt that they are hitting the low paid", but because "this divided, dithering and disintegrating Government is panicking in the face of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election". But while the Tories mocked Mr Darling's panic moves, they were well aware that may have belatedly defused the 10p tax row. The leading Labour rebel, Frank Field, indicated he was satisfied, and then magnanimously apologised for getting personal over the weekend and suggesting that the Prime Minister was prone to rages, unhappy in the job and would quit by the next election. Labour MPs had blamed their drubbing in the recent local elections in England and Wales and Boris Johnson's victory in London on the public backlash against the abolition of the 10p tax rate. And they said their core voters in Crewe and Nantwich were turning away in droves because they could not understand why a Labour government was hitting some of the lowest paid in the country. But the £2.7bn tax came against a backdrop of deepening gloom over the state of the economy. Consumer inflation reached its highest level in 13 months driven by high food and fuel costs, while confidence in the housing market is at rock bottom, with 19 in every 20 estate agents reporting falling house prices in April. Most voters are likely to be more alarmed by disclosure that "at best" property prices will tumble this year by five to 10% - revealed when the Housing Minister Caroline Flint strolled into Downing Street with her official papers in view of the cameras. The concession over the 10p tax will have brought the Government some temporary relief. But it will have a longer term cost. As George Osborne pointed out in the Commons, Mr Darling has been forced to back down on, or change, all his major tax announcements since he became Chancellor - although he actually inherited the 10p debacle from his predecessor at the Treasury. But a message has gone out that at a time when the country is buffeted by economic storms, a weakened and demoralised Brown Government can be forced to give way. Last summer, Gordon Brown posed with Margaret Thatcher on the steps of No 10. But after Tuesday he can hardly echo her famous soundbite: "You turn if you want to: The lady's not for turning"