The overwhelming message was that, politically and economically, not enough has changed since November to give the chancellor the means or motivation to deliver a truly significant moment.

Monthly pay calculator shows if you're really getting a tax cut

Jeremy Hunt's speech was a rabbit-free zone, a series of pre-briefed tweaks and extensions to existing policy, most notably the 2p cut to employees' national insurance, and a couple of shameless land-grabs of Labour policy to cover the £10bn price tag, including reform of "non-dom" status and an extension of the oil and gas windfall tax.

While the opposition will point out the hypocrisy of those measures, Hunt's approach does at least have the virtue of consistency.

The national insurance cut continues his focus on workers rather than the retired and no one keeping an extra £450 a-year will complain.

He's also extended grants and stimulus to growth industries including those in the energy transition, as well as the full-expensing regime for business investment universally welcomed when it was revealed last year.

Budget live updates: No income tax change - but action on child benefit and non-dom status

Little has changed

The problem Mr Hunt and the prime minister face is that these steps only nudge the economic needle and still leave huge questions about the state of the public finances for whoever begins next year in Downing Street.

After all the focus on the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and its role in evaluating the chancellor's self-imposed fiscal rules, its verdict on the public finances is that very little has changed.

The forecast for inflation has come down dramatically, expected to fall to 2% by the summer thanks to declining energy costs, a year earlier than previously set out and in line with the Bank of England.

Money latest: Are you really getting a tax cut? Any help for pensioners? What does it mean for election?

Little else has moved, however.

The overall tax burden will be a little lower in five years as a result of the 2p national insurance cut, but thanks to income tax thresholds being frozen rather than rising in line with inflation, it will still be at a near 70-year high of 37.1%.

When it comes to growth, the OBR's overall GDP forecast is almost unchanged while GDP per-head is forecast to decline slightly.

All of this set the tightest of margins for Mr Hunt to stay within the confines of the rules he set himself to reassure markets that the Truss-Kwarteng Budget was an aberration.

His "headroom" was just £8.9bn, historically low and even less than the £13bn he had in November. According to the OBR, securing even this rounding error of wriggle room requires heroic assumptions about public service spending in future.

The combination of rising tax incomes and sticking to a 1% budget increase for unprotected departments meant he just about scraped past the OBR's calculations. "This is just enough to meet the government's fiscal rules," it said.

Whether it's enough for the electorate, or Mr Hunt's own party, is another question.