More than anything, Budget Day is theatre. MPs squatted on the floor while others crowded by the doors, craning through the throng.
Tailcoated bouncers, prickling with wariness, patrolled packed galleries. Powdered grislies of yesteryear peered down from the lords’ seats.
The public gawped through bulletproof glass. At the far end of this gilded atrium, Fleet Street’s flea-dogs chewed pens, yawned, scratched their hides.
David Cameron popped an Extra Strong Mint. Beside him sat Theresa May in a suit so orange, so low-cut, she could have been Samantha Fox at Guantanamo Bay
And the Chancellor’s family was shown to a special pew in the gods, understanding little of fiscal specifics yet comprehending the vastness of the moment.
George Osborne stood in the middle of this sharply lit, rather Regency scene, watched by his baronet father and his milky-necked wife. Some 2,000 eyeballs stared, impatient for drama. Tension throbbed in the air.
Speaker Bercow had departed, for Budgets are supervised by the Deputy Speaker. When Labour’s Lindsay Hoyle lowered his buttocks on that Chair there came cheers from MPs. Loathing for Bercow only grows.
‘Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer!’ cried Chorley’s Hoyle. To a gale of noise Mr Osborne stepped calmly to his destiny and began a speech that would last 60 minutes – an hour that could dictate the next 50 days and months.
Twang! George shot his bolt at the bullseye. Did it fly true? We may not know until May 8 but he gave it his best. I have not seen him so composed.
Five years ago he looked a prancing, callow youth, unequal to changing a nappy let alone salvaging an economy wrecked by Labour.
MPs squatted on the floor while others crowded by the doors, craning through the throng for Budget Day
Yesterday it was a different figure who stood there: sleeker, more mature. The turnaround of our economy has been a remarkable achievement and he has that, whatever happens on polling day.
This was a Budget buffed to a political gleam. It quivered with strategic Osborne-ishness – a Thatcherite move to help 20-somethings buy a house, a Blairite bash at the banks.
It praised individual Tory MPs who will now become part of the Osborne machine. It queered Labour’s spending plans by selling billions of pounds worth of state assets.
Some low yet excusable digs: a swipe at Ed Miliband’s two kitchens and at the ‘deeds of variation’ tax dodge used (most awkwardly) by the Miliband family.
If Labour lost the election, maybe the party would execute its own ‘deed of variation’ on leader Ed, suggested Mr Osborne.
He noted that although the Government was finally paying off debts from the South Sea Bubble (1720), it could take longer to recover from the loony overspending of Gordon Brown. Lord Mandelson, at the front of the peers’ gallery, loved that, laughing long.
Only a few years ago Mandelson toyed with Osborne as a spider savours a fly in its web. Today, Osborne is a world above his one-time predator. Thus does politics evolve. Generations change. Fortunes fade.
Lord Lawson, an ex-Chancellor, watched owlishly from on high. Near him was Lord Archer, novelist, fantasist.
Despite a decent stab by Ed Miliband (pictured) in response, Labour is becalmed, befuddled, torpedoed by a recovery it never wanted from a Chancellor it so wrongly never rated
As Mr Osborne laid out his economic strengths, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls pinkened and scribbled on some paper.
From my eyrie I could see: underlinings, circles, arrows, assorted doodles but barely an actual word. ‘Cheer up, mate!’ shouted a Tory heckler at Ballsy.
David Cameron popped an Extra Strong Mint. Beside him sat Theresa May in a suit so orange, so low-cut, she could have been Samantha Fox at Guantanamo Bay.
The Osborne voice, often croaky, faded only in the last ten minutes. Tory MP and military historian Keith Simpson filled the duller moments by reading a book entitled Browned-off and Bloody-minded (about Second World War conscripts).
‘Aspiration… Northern Powerhouse… our plan is working… we’re the Comeback Country,’ Mr Osborne said, to Tory cheers. He waxed forth about ‘the symmetric CPI inflation target’.
Andrew Miller (Lab, Ellesmere Port) rested his eyes and slowly slid towards his neighbour, a dribbly upper lip vibrating to his chest’s rhythmic exhalations.
Despite a decent stab by Ed Miliband in response, Labour is becalmed, befuddled, torpedoed by a recovery it never wanted from a Chancellor it so wrongly never rated.