Chancellor George Osborne revealed himself as a suave magician with a Midas-like touch as he unveiled his second Budget in the Commons.
Here was a nation, supposedly on its knees, with rising inflation and with cuts hitting virtually every local authority in the land.
Yet somehow, with dexterous wizardry, but without a swirling cape, Osborne seemed, with regular waves of his hands and high-speed patter, to conjure millions, if not billions, of pounds out of thin air.
"From rescue to reform and from reform to recovery," he cheerfully told a lively House at the outset.
And at the end, an hour later, as he announced a much-welcomed fair fuel stabiliser, he had the same buoyant message: "We are putting fuel into the tank of the British economy."
Some of the contents of this Budget had been deliberately leaked, unlike the recent past when a Chancellor was effectively gagged for a month before Budget Day.
Even so, some MPs were resigned to a doleful Eeyore-type Chancellor. Instead, as Pooh Bear might have observed, he put "a Tigger in the tank".
Mr Osborne, who was plagued with a frog croaking in his throat and had to wet his whistle on numerous occasions, was upbeat from beginning to end, with Prime Minister David Cameron, the epitome of admiration, nodding enthusiastically at every new announcement.
It was not, Mr Osborne said, a tax-raising Budget, nor was it a give-away Budget, but a fiscally-neutral one designed to encourage enterprise - "a Budget for making things, not for making things up", he said in a swipe at Labour.
The message that should go round the world, from Shanghai to Seattle, he declared, was that Britain was open for business.
And to this end he announced a simplification of the tax system, the removal of more than one million people from taxation, new enterprise zones, help for first-time property buyers, a clampdown on tax avoiders and evaders, improvements to the railways, a cut in water bills for those in the South West, new tax obligations for the users of private jets, scope for thousands more apprenticeships, and, most popular of all, action designed to stave off the seemingly unstoppable rise in the cost of filling the tank of your vehicle.
It was a performance delivered with all the aplomb and confidence of an experienced member of the Magic Circle. It delighted the Tories.
But Labour leader Ed Miliband was not impressed. For him, it was the work of an illusionist.
He chided the Chancellor for ignoring growth: "Down last year, this year and next year."
It was, Mr Miliband said, the same old story: "It is hurting, but it isn't working..."
© 2012 The Press Association Limited
