Budget analysis by Political Editor Chris Lloyd

WHEN George Osborne stood at the Despatch Box yesterday lunchtime, there were 50 days to go until the General Election. The clock was ticking, but the polls have been sticking. The Conservatives are neck and neck with Labour with no clear winner emerging. The Budget, therefore, had to have immediate political impact.

So the two really new announcements appealed directly to those who might vote Conservative: savers, who are predominantly elderly and are most likely to bother to vote, and those young hopefuls who aspire to buying their first home.

The rest of the hour-long speech, though, was about changing the mood music that surrounds the government. Mr Osborne attempted to dispel the discordant noises that suggest the Conservatives are only interested in the better off by again raising the threshold at which people start paying Income Tax – a measure that especially helps the lower paid.

He also appeared to clobber the banks with a £900m levy – showing that the Conservatives are not supporting their wealthy friends in the City.

And in order to put the mufflers on Labour’s constant refrain about there being a cost of living crisis, Mr Osborne appears to have created a new index that apparently shows that living standards are higher in 2015 than they were in 2010.

This made Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, quite exercised in reply. He claimed the contrary: that people were earning £1,600-a-year less than they were in 2010, and that the average family was £1,127-a-year worse off due to 24 tax rises.

There are lies, damned lies and then there are cost of living standards statistics.

The “Northern Powerhouse” is a phrase that Mr Osborne used several times yesterday and it is probably as meaningful as those cost of living statistics. Genuinely interesting developments and devolutions are taking place in Greater Manchester, but a part from the £1m to pump prime the chemical industry in Darlington, there was very little to generate much enthusiasm about the powerhouse concept on this side of the Pennines.

Perhaps the most striking of Mr Osborne’s manoeuvres was to bring austerity to an end a year earlier than expected, by 2018-19 and so well before the next election.

This enabled him to repudiate another of Labour’s favourite attack lines about Government spending being slashed so much that it was now at the same level as it was in 1938. Instead, Mr Osborne will crow that under his prudent management, by the next election, the country will be back to spending at the same level as it was in 2000, when Gordon Brown was in his pomp and before boom turned to bust.

Perhaps more importantly, Mr Osborne’s manoeuvre sends out a message of hope to battered voters. He was saying that after the dark days of cuts, there is light at the end of the tunnel.

And he was also saying that the job is only half done, that there are only three more years of pain to get through and then the nation will be in calmer, warmer waters. It was a naked appeal for wavering voters to stick with the Tories.

What he was most definitely not saying was that before he can balance the books and reach that better weather, he is going to have to unleash a storm of cuts – one estimate suggests that should the Conservatives win outright, next year’s cuts will be four times as great as this year’s.

Which is what Mr Miliband seized upon. Labour will also have to cut public spending should it win the election, but it is proposing to reduce the deficit over a longer period of time, and to borrow more money to invest in public services, like the NHS. After juddering over the winter, the NHS and the lack of social care is going to be a central part of Labour’s campaign message.

So there is real difference between the two main parties – about £30bn worth of cuts in difference – although if you want to vote against austerity, you will have to seek out a Green or a nationalist candidate.

In truth, however much you comb Mr Osborne’s up-beat message of the “comeback country...walking tall once again” over the contents of the speech, in reality the Budget was as thin as his hair. But it must help voters to see the difference between the parties in terms of policies and personalities.

Today is a new day. There are just 49 days to go before they make that choice.