Just before prime minister’s questions today the government announced there would be a free vote on fox hunting. For George Osborne’s sake, let’s hope that it passes, as with today’s announcement on a compulsory ‘national living wage’, he has just shot a major Labour fox.

Yes of course, the devil is in the detail. A ‘eforise’ from £7.85 to £7.20 is, of course, a cut. But that will not matter to people currently on the minimum wage who will receive considerable increases in their pay. This move will also trump Labour’s electoral offer of raising the minimum wage to £8 per hour by 2019. How do we celebrate this while also keeping the pressure on those details?

This was a budget, yes, but it was also an audition. As such there was more showmanship than usual. This was a spectacular rabbit, pulled from a cruel and divisive hat of truly shocking welfare reforms. There was also Osborne’s constant political dividing lines. In this he is truly the son of Gordon Brown, and as such is aiming to inherit from the self-styled heir to Blair. This budget proclaimed false divides between poor students and taxpayers, between young and old, and between those who work and those who claim. At every turn, Osborne took the opportunity both to scapegoat those both more vulnerable and less likely to vote, to add to an already concerning national narrative of ‘scroungers and strivers’, and to make sure that Labour finds itself on the wrong side of the line every time.

Make no mistake, this budget is going to change the country in fundamental ways. It has reshaped our society cutting viciously from the welfare budget, but making sure talk – if not actual effect – of rewards appealed broadly. Over the last five years the Tories implemented an austerity strategy and started the changes we have seen today. But, it takes more than one parliament to make such changes permanent. By 2020 the Tories will have been in power for a decade. That decade will not just change our country and our society – it will also change our politics. Are Labour yet alive to this?

How do we remain a party that champions the causes of the most vulnerable while seeking to appeal to the majority? How do we convince the vulnerable we are on their side without losing the ear of the rest of the country, or being seen only as a minority interest party? These questions will seem cruel to many – heartless even. But unless we find new, imaginative and appealing ways to answer them, we will never have the opportunity to really stand up for the vulnerable. Unless we do this we will only ever be able to shout about their treatment from the sidelines.

Labour are currently worrying that we failed to win the argument over the crash of 2008 and we differ over how and whether to oppose the austerity of 2010-2015. This budget makes it clear that we will be faced with a very different country by 2020. Are we ready to understand that? The answers of the 1990s and the early twentieth century will not be the answers we need. We are in a different place now.

The Tories are moving to fundamentally shift themselves towards the kind of blue collar Conservatism’ that has been so successfully championed by people like Robert Halfon and David Skelton of Renewal. Labour has been far too complacent about this for far too long. We laugh at the idea of a bullingdon boy implementing such changes or appealing to such voters. We should stop laughing. He has done both.

How will our leadership candidates respond to this? This questions could fundamentally affect the future of the Labour party. We need new answers, not a stale fight between left and right. Can we learn from the successful way the Tories have redefined themselves? The next few weeks will show us. If we can’t, we may be in more trouble even than we thought at 10.01pm on 7 May.

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Emma Burnell is a political blogger and campaigner. She tweets @EmmaBurnell_