ALL Chancellors are political but some are more political than others.

George Osborne is the Tory election strategist as much as he is custodian of the UK finances, so it came as no surprise that the Budget speech felt like a read-through of the General Election manifesto which will soon be going off to the printers.

So the Budget has to be judged on two counts: Whether it is good for the economy and the UK; and whether it benefits Tory prospects. Our assessment is that on the first count the jury is out but may well return with a negative verdict, but that on the second it is likely to strike a sufficient chord with those beginning to feel good about coming out of the recent economic quagmire.

For a Chancellor who has resoundingly missed so many of his self-set targets on economic performance and the debt crisis, it was a bravura performance in rewriting history, wrong on almost every count but clinging to an argument about the direction of travel.

The point is not whether the economy of the UK has improved since the banking crash. It could scarcely have done otherwise. Iceland and Ireland have done even better in terms of recovery. Nor is there much point in raking over the embers of the methods employed in achieving this recovery, as Ed Miliband spent too much of his time doing yesterday.

The real point is where do we go next? For all his talk of "prosperity widely shared" and going from "austerity to prosperity" there was no evidence that behind the "Britain walking tall" rhetoric Mr Osborne has any grasp of the damage which has been done to the fabric of our society.

He boasted about employment but not the nature or type of employment, which has too often been characterised by low pay, insecurity and zero hours contracts. He mentioned benefits only to insist that coercion into work had been a good thing, as if that and not economic growth had been the driving force, and to make clear in an almost throwaway mention that the clampdown on benefits will continue.

Above all, Mr Osborne spoke for those in work, those with savings, those with pensions and those seeking mortgages. All good. But his silence on those out of work, without savings, stuck on the basic pension, or who have to rely on social housing speaks volumes. Mr Miliband, in his exasperated observation, got it right: "Friend of the low-paid? You couldn't make it up."

Any largesse the Chancellor felt able to bestow was based on updated statistics from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which dramatically revised figures from late last year to suggest the national debt could be paid down a year earlier than previously thought. To say this should come with a health warning is an understatement. The OBR has been so erratic for so long that it has been known to issue corrections to its own corrections.

Nor should Labour have joined Mr Osborne in being so smug on lowered projections on oil. There is a one-word answer: Norway. That nation provided for its future while the UK failed to do so.

Yesterday was encapsulated by one BBC correspondent as "happy oil workers, angry bankers". This is absurd. The North Sea oil industry, a cash cow for successive Chancellors over decades had no control over the OPEC manoeuvring which produced the current crisis, while the bankers were the authors of their industry's own misfortune. Bleating about the Chancellor raising a take of around £40bn on the banking sector by less than £1bn does not sound like pips squeaking. They really do need to develop a sense of shame.

The belated relief for the oil and gas sector is welcome. It should have come in the last Autumn Statement. Yes, oil giants are the epitome of multinational capital, but real jobs are on the line in Aberdeen and across much of the UK and it was absurd to continue taxation levels at the same rate as when the oil price was double what it is now.

There are, of course, other measures which we support but few without qualification. The cut in duty on spirits is a welcome boost for whisky sales, although fair taxation should be no impediment to fair unit pricing.

The £1000 tax for allowance for savers is a naked bribe to Tory voters, as is the high-risk right to cash in annuities. Yes, ultra-low interest rates have been a serious problem for those lucky enough to be savers, but this sounds like a clear sop to the better off, often pensioners who have done rather well out of successive budgets.

Help for would-be home owners to save for a deposit by giving them a 25% premium on any savings sounds like a good idea, but a better one would be to encourage house building, both for sale and for social rent. This would be fair to those simply seeking a roof over their head and would take the heat out of the housing market.

What of the so called "Google Tax"? Barn doors and bolting horses spring to mind. "Let the message go out - this country's tolerance for those who will not pay their fair share of taxes has come to an end," said the Chancellor. Mr Miliband scored one of his few points when he railed against the fact that the the Tories were in the pocket of this sector.

On normal fare of the Red Box from generations past,on booze and fags and petrol, Mr Osborne was brutally populist. Forget climate change or world oil prices, get a few pence off the pump price ahead of May. A national problem with alcohol? Knock a penny off the pint. Cigarettes? We are already embroiled in plain packaging, let's not go there.

Short of getting Jeremy Clarkson to deliver it, this Budget could scarcely have been more populist, but it might just work for the Tories.