From the populist to the pragmatic, to the promised but not, as yet, precisely defined, George Osborne’s speech was an attempt to spell out how a Conservative government will behave – what life under a Tory government will feel like.

Two years ago David Cameron’s Conservatives had a simple message. In contrast to Gordon Brown, they would be “the heirs to Blair”, but with the important qualifier that they would share the proceeds of growth between sustaining public services and tax cuts.