THERE can barely have been a thinner Budget. Despite the parlous world economic situation and Britain's large spending plans, there will be no tax double whammy. There won't even be the slightest of tickles in your pocket.

But this Budget was not about economics. It was pure politics. It was about Britain's standing in the world, the direction it is facing and how the country is to be made up in the future.

For all his studied prudence, Mr Brown is to tackle the global downturn by crossing his fingers and borrowing a little while praying that he can cling on to his spending.

He may get lucky. He did yesterday. He delayed his Budget three weeks in the hope that the war would be over when he came to deliver it. A few minutes before he rose to speak, it was. The stockmarket is no longer plummeting, oil prices are steadying, huge reconstruction contracts will soon be paid out. Just cross your fingers and cling on.

Politically, though, this was a huge Budget. Traditionally, British Budgets are about minor matters such as tax rates within these shores. But yesterday, Mr Brown dispensed largesse to the world. Britain will rebuild Iraq and fund humanitarian organisations. It will also halve world poverty by 2015, set up primary schools for 115 million children in the Third World and create an international health system that keeps the price of Aids and malaria drugs low - this despite primary schools in the North-East shedding teachers for lack of money and our own NHS being still several percentage points of funding behind the rest of the West.

The war, though, has emboldened the Government so that it feels that, second only to the US, Britain leads the world.

The war has also opened up severe divisions within Europe. With Britain and a cluster of other countries ranged against the "old Europe" of France and Germany, there must now be political questions about Britain joining the euro.

Yesterday, Mr Brown raised whopping big economic ones as well. He didn't do anything as dramatic as rule out Britain joining, but he did disparage the performance of the euro-zone at every possible opportunity.

In fact, you could almost hear Britain turning on her foundations as Mr Brown spoke. Where once she peered uncertainly at Europe, she ended up the day staring out over the Atlantic.

Britain needed to copy the flexibilities in America's Labour market, said Mr Brown. Britain needed to copy America's ability to innovate. Britain needed to raise the 1.9 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product that it spent on research and development to be more like the Americans, who spend 2.8 per cent.

So pro-American was Mr Brown that rather than use the English word mathematics or maths, he used the US-only "math".

Then he delivered the ultimate put-down for France and Germany. Britain, he said, might soon assist the 15 million poor souls on mainland Europe who are unemployed - it would be a missionary exercise, rather like building primary schools in the poverty-stricken Third World.

Mr Brown has long been a euro-agnostic - certainly compared with his leader, Tony Blair, who has been an avowed euro-believer. This difference is one of the sources of speculation that Mr Brown wants to oust Mr Blair.

Yesterday, Mr Brown laid such speculation to rest. He opened by highlighting the "debt of gratitude" the country owed to Mr Blair's strong leadership in difficult times.

It was as if he had come to understand that he will never lead the country because Mr Blair has a monopoly on waging war and being an international statesman.

However, Mr Brown will continue to run it. He was not going to join the euro, as Mr Blair wished, and he was going to divide the country into regions - again, not as Mr Blair wished.

There will be regional inflation figures to help set regional pay rates and regional benefit levels. There will be regional venture capital funds and regional scientific and industrial councils. At least half of London, by the sound of it, will be moved out to the regions within a few days.

And then, of course, the regions will require their own assemblies to run their own figures, councils, committees and funds. More than any of John Prescott's White Papers, this Budget provided a blueprint for devolution.

Yesterday's Budget was thin on economic headlines but full of long-term meaning.