Alistair Darling drives a nail in the coffin of Blairism and New Labour

When Gerry Sutcliffe, the little-known sports minister, suggested that some footballer's wages were "obscenely" high, he was tartly slapped down by our friend, Mr Downing Street Source, who said Gordon was irritated by the remark.

But hasn't the Chancellor done the same this morning?

In Alistair Darling's interview with Rachel Sylvester, he says: "People get fed up if they see others getting great big bonuses and they can't actually see what they did. It can be extremely frustrating... Boards need to ask themselves, 'Are we behaving reasonably?"

Make no mistake, this is solid, leftist stuff (Peter Hain went for a more aggressive version of this during the deputy leadership race, as did Harriet Harman). But it is certainly not something you ever would ever have heard from Tony Blair (or New Labour acolytes) who preached that in a global economy that "it is just the way it is". 

The Chancellor also takes aim at gas and water companies, easy lending, and says he will not exempt hauliers from a fuel duty rise. Is he making friends on the left?

Update: Vince Cable sees an irony: "This is a rather odd statement to make after he has capitulated under pressure with regards to his capital gains tax reform and non domicile taxation. It is difficult to understand quite what he means by saying that he wants to curb the rewards of fat cats when he has just agreed to a formula for capital gains tax under which some of the richest people will pay lower rate of tax on the capital gains than their cleaners will pay on their income. Similarly he has devised a formula for the non domiciled residents under which billionaires like Mittal and Abramovich will pay a minor levy for them to retain tax privileges while expatriates and immigrant workers on modest incomes will pay the same levy. If he was serious about fat cats, he would not have given into pressure on these issues."