FOR a Chancellor in a financial strait-jacket, George Osborne at least found some room in which to wriggle.

After last year’s disastrous Budget, which required a succesion of Uturns, Mr Osborne can be credited with at least coming up with some points of genuine interest.

The most eye-catching of those is the “Help to Buy” initiative aimed at helping people onto the property ladder and boosting the construction industry at the same time.

Together with National Insurance cuts to help small firms create jobs, a tax break for heavy industry, a penny off a pint of beer, a freeze on fuel duty, and a £3bn boost for infrastructure projects, it is not the deadly dull Budget that was generally expected.

The problem is that the straitjacket is laced up so tight that the wriggleroom is pretty insignificant. Against the backdrop of a terrible economic outlook, an already weak growth forecast that has halved, soaring debt, pay freezes, and yet more public sector austerity, the points of interest don’t really add up to very much.

Like the penny off a pint, it is relatively small beer and the general reaction we are getting across our region is that there is not enough to really get the economy moving.

Having stood shoulder to shoulder with David Cameron in making it clear that the straitjacket cannot be loosened for years to come, the reality is that Mr Osborne really doesn’t have much room for manoeuvre.

To twist now in his game of pontoon would be an admission that his strategy hasn’t worked.

But to stick with such miserably low growth figures is a huge political gamble with an election moving ever closer.