Anyone viewing Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Budget this week could surely be forgiven for thinking they were watching a repeat.

There was an overwhelming sense of déjà vu as Mr Hunt attempted to paint the picture that he was a part of a Government which is highly competent on the economy, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

There was talk of “sound money”, as he tried yet again to claim credit for the drop in inflation.

And there was the same lack of appetite to address the huge elephant in the room, Brexit, with the word not even mentioned this time.

This omission might seem a little strange, given Brexit is what the current vintage of Conservatives have been all about. Then again, given the enormous damage from Brexit, maybe it is no surprise that Mr Hunt, at one time a Remainer but now a senior member of a Government that is most enamoured with the departure from the European Union, did not mention it.

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The Office for Budget Responsibility, set up by former Conservative chancellor George Osborne in 2010 to provide independent forecasting, had plenty to say about Brexit this week.

It declared: “We forecast that trade volumes will continue to be subdued in the next few years due to sluggish growth in the UK and global economies, and the evolving impact of Brexit. From 2024 to 2028, we expect export and import volumes to average growth of 0.3% and 0.1% a year, respectively. As a result, net trade makes a negligible contribution to growth over the forecast period.”

So much for the brave new world of massive new trade deals promised by the Brexiters.

The OBR also observed: “Risks to our real GDP (gross domestic product) forecast remain elevated. As always, the outlook for productivity growth is our most important and uncertain forecast judgement. The effects of subdued investment, the energy price shock and Brexit compound the ongoing weakness seen since the financial crisis.”

And it had plenty more to say about Brexit.

It declared: “Recent trade data have been volatile and subject to large revisions. However, they remain broadly consistent with our assumption that Brexit will reduce the UK’s trade intensity - exports plus imports as a share of GDP - by 15% in the long term.”

So, yes, maybe it was politically astute of Mr Hunt not to mention the “B” word.

Returning to the “seen it all before” feel of Mr Hunt’s Budget speech, there was also the familiar Tory attempt from the Chancellor at one-upmanship over our European neighbours with some very selective comparisons. These rang as hollow as ever.

And then there was the obsessive Tory drive to force the economically inactive back into the workforce, dressed up as help and support but of course involving benefit cuts for those who do not do what they are told.

The Budget speech was so, so heavy on the narrow-minded ideology we have seen from the Tories from 2010, which is no surprise given Mr Hunt was a senior member of the David Cameron and George Osborne administration which began the savage and destructive austerity programme.

Mr Hunt declared: “The economy today has around 900,000 vacancies. It would be easy to fill them with higher migration - but with over 10 million adults of working age who are not in work that would be economically and morally wrong.

“Those who can work should. This is an issue I have tackled in every Budget and Autumn Statement I have delivered.”

There was some talk around moves on childcare, much of which related to previously announced policy.

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And Mr Hunt declared: “In the autumn, with the help of our superb Work and Pensions Secretary, we announced the Back to Work plan which will support one million adults with medical conditions and reduce the number of people assessed as not needing to look for work by two thirds.”

Make of this what you will.

The Conservatives’ strategy of attempting to tempt or probably more often force the economically inactive into employment, while removing the crucial source of workers from European Economic Area countries, continues to look most ill-judged.

That is, of course, looking at it from an economic perspective.

After all, when it comes to the ending of free movement of people between the UK and EEA, it is baffling on any rational basis that people should be celebrating an exacerbation of the country’s skills and labour shortages crisis.

That said, many who love the clampdown on immigration seem to have no interest in the effect on the economy, and that looks to include some senior Tories.

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Mr Hunt’s speech was full of bombast and grandstanding.

He called it a “Budget for long-term growth”. Yet any kind of meaningful growth remains conspicuous by its absence.

The UK economy fell into recession in the final three months of last year, with a second consecutive quarterly fall in output.

It is forecast by the International Monetary Fund that the UK will be the second-weakest among the Group of Seven leading industrialised nations this year in the growth stakes with expansion of 0.6%.

The OBR forecasts that UK output growth will pick up to 0.8% in 2024 “as interest rates fall and real household incomes recover”.

This growth forecast is slightly ahead of the IMF's projected 0.6% expansion but very weak by historical standards.

Growth is then forecast by the OBR to pick up to 1.9% in 2025 and 2% in 2026, before decelerating to 1.8% in 2027 and 1.7% in 2028.

The OBR now puts the UK’s “assumed trend rate” of growth at around one-and-two-thirds per cent. It was not so long ago that the UK economy’s longer-term trend rate of annual growth was viewed as being 2.5% or even 2.75%.

Mr Hunt claims to have “a plan to grow the economy".

Observing the performance of the UK economy for years now amid the twin disasters of austerity and Brexit, and the weak outlook, one question springs to mind about this plan. Where on earth is it?