Gordon Brown yesterday drew a line under the third-way rhetoric of New Labour when he announced significant tax increases to fund an NHS cash bonanza.

Fleet Street, which publishes a plethora of guides, fact files and pull-outs, is under no illusion about the scale of the gamble and casts a jaundiced eye over yesterday's announcement.

"OUCH! that hurt, Gordon. It had better work," proclaims the front page of the Mirror.

The Times concludes that the chancellor has "gambled career and country" on a budget which effectively adds three pence in the pound to the nation's tax bill.

Echoing Conservative criticism, the Telegraph claims the UK has broken through the 40 per cent tax barrier - heralding a return to the "tax and spend" policy of old-style Labour chancellors.

In the Independent, Hamish McRae suggests Brown is "pushing his luck" and the government is unlikely to convince voters that the money will actually make a difference.

The Mail suggests Brown is "wringing the middle class" with a budget which amounts to an additional four pence on income tax.

The Guardian, however, believes the chancellor has traded his "love affair" with business to deliver a £40 billion "kiss of life" to the NHS. A new kind of politics began yesterday, suggests the columnist Hugo Young.

Writing in the Sun, Trevor Kavanagh concludes that the chancellor is "taking the P" by increasing tax by the equivalent of a penny in the pound, but the City-focused FT observes that the pain of higher tax is being "widely spread".

In its 32 pink pages, the FT says workers got off lightly in comparison to business - a shift which has put "clear red water" between the Gordon Brown and his former city chums.

In the FT Nicholas Timmins warns that the chancellor's budget is a defining moment for the NHS.

"If this plans fails we can kiss goodbye to the NHS as we have known it, loved it and hated it," he opines.