The trick for any Cabinet Minister is to give the impression that really bad news is by no means as dire as it actually is. This, of course, is especially difficult for the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, to achieve because even in "normal" times he comes across as a mournful Eeyore-like figure.

However, to his credit as a parliamentary performer, he delivered his Pre-Budget Report today in such a manner as to suggest at least to the casual listener that things were not so black as they had been painted and that recovery was around the corner.

He wisely refrained from using the term "green shoots", an expression which now automatically invites derision.

But he survived for 50 minutes or so with no more than one or two outbursts of mocking laughter from his opponents, which given what he had to report was verging on the miraculous.

The loudest jeering from his critics came unsurprisingly when he said he was making his announcements "from a position of strength".

And his admission that public finances were £3 billion deeper in the red than he had previously predicted also produced a chorus of outrage from Opposition benches.

Some of the impact of his remarks was lessened by the probably deliberate leaking of certain proposals, including the immensely popular crackdown on bankers' bonuses and the less popular (to those involved, at least) capping of public sector pay.

He nodded to the green fraternity, with a pledge to invest in wind power, and a plan to replace inefficient domestic boilers and tax concession for those with electric cars.

But he insisted he was confident that the economy would start growing by the turn of the year. "Next year growth will be between 1% and 1.5%," he predicted.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, sitting just behind the Chancellor, remained Sphinx-like through the majority of statement, his only noticeable sign of animation being when Mr Darling announced the cut in bingo duty.

By contrast, the Leader of the House, Harriet Harman, chic in her famous burgundy suit, nodded with great (some might say exaggerated) vigour throughout the proceedings.

Mr Darling, however, is no rabble-rouser: he cannot work a crowd. He therefore sat down at the end without any wild ovations and waving order papers from Labour benches.

One veteran observer of these events suggested that they were too dolefully preoccupied with their own fate at the forthcoming general election to work themselves up into a frenzy of enthusiasm about a statement which the shadow Chancellor George Osborne was to imply had more to do with electioneering than sorting out the economy.