Just look what happened. In a move that transformed the political landscape virtually over­night, the Tories pledged a massive cut in inheritance tax. That announcement produced a seismic opinion poll swing and ended Mr Brown’s honeymoon period as Prime Minister.

Chan­cellor Alistair Darling tried to mend the damage by unveiling Labour’s own, rather limp, inheritance tax reduction. But it was too late and the Govern­ment failed to gain a shred of the credit.

How Mr Brown must rue his failure to listen to Daily Express readers back then. Yet now the Prime Minister finds himself in a similar position.

It is an open secret at West­minster that scrapping the proposed 2p-a-litre rise in duty on petrol and diesel scheduled for October has been pencilled in to early drafts of Mr Darling’s autumn Pre-Budget Report.

David Cameron has dropped a big hint that the Tories are plotting an overhaul of the way fuel tax is calculated to reduce duty when crude oil prices rocket. Many officials and ministers are pressing Mr Darling for more rapid, and preferably far more radical, action.

Cabinet ministers are in revolt, terrified that Mr Brown is again dithering away an opp­ortunity to ease the Govern­­ment’s deep unpopularity. Per­haps he will see sense and seize a chance of salvaging something from his tattered reputation for financial competence. But the signs do not augur well.

Questioned about fuel duty in the Commons yesterday, the Prime Minister inexplicably began pleading poverty on
the Treasury’s behalf. He dismissed suggestions of revenue windfall resulting from the oil price surge, claiming VAT and income tax receipts were dropping. 

“Revenues are not up, revenues are down,” whined the architect of a decade of unrestrained taxing and spending. Yet the Treasury is raking in a £6billion windfall from the oil price surge, enough to cut fuel duty by at least 12p a litre.

Suddenly, after years of spending on ludicrous Labour vanity projects, voters are expected to believe that Mr Brown cannot find the cash to help desperately over-stretched families. Indeed, his pathetic claims of penury encapsulate the tragic position in which he finds himself.

His assumption of power in Number 10 coincided with the moment the gaff was blown on his stealth tax trickery.

While the economy ex­panded, house prices soared and incomes crept up, taxpayers were able to bear his sneaky increases in fuel taxes, stamp duty and other covert methods of pilfering our money.

Now times are tougher and household spending power is shrinking, any attempts to increase stealth taxation are instantly exposed and met with fierce resistance.

Ministers initially pretended only gas-guzzlers would be penalised by the latest raid on vehicle excise duty. Yesterday, Mr Brown was left pleading for mercy from his jittery backbenchers to avert yet another Commons rebellion and force the tax disc changes through.

The Government’s weakness in the face of a national revolt over taxation has been made all too clear. The Treasury has been forced into a series of retreats, over capital gains tax, levies on foreign tycoons and the abolition of the 10p starting rate for income tax.

On each issue, taxpayers made it clear that any further hikes in Labour’s crippling tax burden would not be tolerated. In the face of their rage, the Government backed down.

It means the stakes over fuel duty could hardly be higher. Petrol and diesel prices affect every household, both at the pumps and through increased transport costs for food and other essentials reflected in higher prices in the shops.

Last night the Daily Express petition voiced that discontent to Number 10. This morning Mr Brown (the most unpopular Prime Minister in our history) must decide if he can afford to take on that popular revolt.

In the words of Dirty Harry, he has to ask himself one question: “Do I feel lucky?”