First, credit where credit is due. Not everyone is worse off after 12 years of Labour. Some have done quite nicely, thank you. All that effort has paid handsome dividends. For them, success is measured in pounds, and things can only get better. They are progressive – progressively richer.
Tony Blair has the millionaire's property portfolio and the bank balance to prove it. Gordon Brown earns far more than he needs to pay his cleaner. Dozens of former ministers are even now in the revolving door that takes them effortlessly from government to corporate directorship.
Quangocrats stroke their gold-plated public sector pensions. The bankers you and I now pay for are once again earning fat bonuses. And Peter Mandelson boasts that he has no mortgage on his £2.2 million Regent's Park townhouse.
If Labour fails to pull out of its death spiral in the polls, and does indeed crash in flames some time next spring, a lucky few at the top will be able to walk away from the wreckage with a smile and, like the man in the Charles Addams cartoon, murmur "back to the old drawing board".
But the many Labour was supposed to look after are not escaping so lightly. On every measure that is dear to our current political leadership, the numbers point to a record of failure that vitiates everything that New Labour supposedly stands for.
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