PRIME Minister Gordon Brown can this weekend be forgiven for biting his fingernails as he surveys the wreckage of the local elections, where Labour was booted out of council seats across huge swathes of England, saw its power base in Wales disintegrate and looked on helplessly as the Conservative Boris Johnson was crowned in the most powerful civic seat in the UK.
If he believes his oft-repeated mantra that Britain has never before enjoyed such a prolonged period of economic growth, and that millions of families are better off than ever, he must be stunned.
It's not such a puzzle for the rest of us, though.
Soaring mortgage costs for those who can get one, and the mounting prospect of repossession for those who can't, is a good place to begin. Spice that up with falling house prices in many parts of the country, and soaring holiday costs as the pound falls, and you start to get the flavour.
Stir in the 10p tax row, rising fuel and food bills and the pensions crisis and you've concocted a cauldron of hubble, bubble, toil and trouble.
And if revenge is a dish best served cold, the voters of England and Wales certainly took it on Thursday.
Does this mean Labour will lose the next general election? Far from it. We suggest 10 things Labour has to start getting right to come back from the dead.
1. Cut stamp duty to kick start the housing market
While property prices are holding up in Scotland, they are tumbling like last week's rain in many other parts of the UK as buyers flee in panic.
Mortgage broker John Postlethwaite at PSFM in Edinburgh suggests Chancellor Alistair Darling should cut stamp duty to encourage first-time buyers to take the plunge and get transactions moving.
Or he could go one step better and declare a stamp duty holiday as the Conservatives did during the last property recession in 1991 for all homes under £250,000. In today's prices that would allow buyers to escape the hated tax on all property under about £700,000.
2. Cut interest rates to slash the cost of mortgages
Charcol's Ray Boulger said: "The Government keeps chiming on about our historically low interest rates, but it isn't true. After allowing for inflation, our interest rates are expensive. They must come down."
The latest Bank of England figures reveal that some six million borrowers on fixed deals are paying the highest interest in eight years.
Boulger also suggests helping those with negative equity to move, which will also help free up the market. He said: "Politicians and banks always do the reverse of what is needed. Mortgages for 125% of the value of a property came into being during the old days of negative equity, so borrowers could still move and take their negative equity with them.
"Yet now when we see negative equity for the first time since the early 1990s, and we really need these loans again, they have been withdrawn."
3. Sort out the tax mess by raising personal allowances
Increasing the tax paid by those earning below £19,500 has caused huge anger. Grant Thornton's Mike Warburton suggested: "Let people keep more of what they earn, through higher allowances, rather than taking it away and then giving it back via a complex web of reliefs. We need far more clarity."
4. Overhaul remuneration and expenses for MPs and MEPs
Those earning around the average wage of £26,000 and below have been disgusted at the lurid tales of MPs, who already earn not far short of £70,000, claiming hundreds of thousands more in expenses to pay members of their family, fund second homes, travel on first-class trains and otherwise enjoy the kind of lifestyle most of their voters can only dream of – largely paid for by those on average wages or less.
5. Tackle pensions inequality in the private and public sectors
This might include raising state employees' retirement age to 68, as with the rest of the population, breaking the link with salary for new employees and removing the automatic tax-free cash enhancement which comes on top of the pension.
6. Cut fuel duties
Big, ugly truckers are transformed by the camera into cuddly, caring teddy bears. Expect to see more of them and their roadblocks unless petrol prices come down. Drivers everywhere are hurting.
7. Stop increasing taxes on private pensions
Last month's 2p cut in the basic rate of tax from 22p to 20p will reduce the tax rebate going into private pensions by several hundred million pounds a year, cutting the retirement income of seven million employees.
At the Budget, Darling announced a special concession to charities: they are still to receive a 22p rather than 20p rebate. A similar concession for pension contributions would take some of the sting out of the change for pensions.
8. Reverse the tax hike for employee share save schemes
PSFM chairman Geoff Tresman said: "There is something very wrong when wealthy buy-to-let investors and entrepreneurs enjoy substantial tax cuts in their capital gains tax bill while the checkout workers at Asda see tax on their modest company savings schemes rise from 10% to 18%. Reversing this would be a very simple measure."
9. Sort out council tax
Voters are fed up with handing over thousands of pounds a year to have their rubbish collected only once a fortnight.
10. Whatever you do, don't buy any more banks
Stop both the knee-jerk reactions and dithering, and lose the paranoia. Listen to the advice of the professionals. Had Brown and Darling consulted tax experts before implementing the recent changes, most of the mess associated with scrapping the 10p band and reforming CGT might have been avoided.
