IT is hard to look at Rishi Sunak and not think of Father Ted trying to teach Dougal the difference between “small” and “far away”.

Mr Sunak, when seen on his own, looks a regular sized Chancellor. But put him beside someone of average height and build and he appears tiny. Like Stuart Little tiny. You see it when he walks up Downing Street beside another Minister, or if he is being interviewed one to one and the director cuts to a wide shot. On Sky News at the weekend he made the normally petite presenter Sophy Ridge look like the 50 foot woman, about to attack.

Delivering his first Budget yesterday he seemed perfectly at ease. He looked taller, too. Perhaps he had been given a box to stand on, or maybe that is the sort of confidence a bespoke suit gives a chap.

Mr Sunak has not been in the job long, having come to the position after the previous incumbent jumped ship in protest at Number 10’s proposed takeover of the Treasury. Dominic Cummings, the PM’s chief aide, was all for installing Larry the cat as Chancellor. In the end, Mr Sunak got the job.

Among his tasks yesterday was to show that he was a man, not a mouser, and his own man at that. Before he could get to the juicy part of the Budget, handing out the ribbon-wrapped goodies to all his new pals on the Tory backbenches, he addressed the coronavirus crisis.

The Commons heard that one fifth of the working age population might need to take time off work (a medical process known as “doing a Dorries”). That is a lot of people sitting at home watching Phil and Holly on This Morning.

The downturn in demand and the problems with supply were going to have a “significant” impact on the economy, said the Chancellor. Silence rang out. But, and you knew a but was coming, it would be temporary. Mr Sunak may have come to the job of Chancellor just as the global economy is teetering on the brink, but he was not going to be a total buzz kill. The Government’s response would be “temporary, timely and targeted”, he insisted in the first of many alliterative lists. He likes his alliteration does the Chancellor, almost as much as he likes spending.

Now, you may have been under the impression these last ten years that the UK’s finances amounted to whatever spare change could be found down the back of the sofa in 10 Downing Street. Money was tight, and it was vital to balance the books, so austerity ruled, spending was slashed, and those on benefits had to be squeezed till their pips squeaked. No one wanted to do this, you understand, but as a former PM said, there was no such thing as a magic money tree.

Well, it turns out Mr Sunak has discovered a forest of magic money trees. He shook this one, then that one, showering cash left, right and centre. Speaking of left and right, Mr Sunak decided he was going to merge all three positions into one and make Labour redundant. It was the Conservatives, he said, who were “the real workers’ party” and “the party of public services”. Just to further annoy comrade Corbyn he boasted, Blair-like, of delivering “a people’s Budget”.

The closest the Chancellor came to a half way decent gag was when he abolished VAT on digital books, including “works of fantasy like John McDonnell’s Economics for the Many”. Sitting opposite, the man who would have been Chancellor had Labour miraculously won the election, laughed and felt in his pocket as if he was going to reprise his Mao’s Little Red Book joke of five years ago. A rubbish joke then, age had not improved it.

The Chancellor’s main riff, one that he returned to again and again, was that the Conservatives were “getting it done”. It was the boss’s line about Brexit, or was it Cummings who had coined it? Either way, the Chancellor said it so often and with such relish it was as if he had adopted it for his own. Little man, big ambition. Watch out, Boris.