ONE Conservative MP believes it as comforting as “evensong in an Anglican church” – but a second, the fiercely independent Ken Clarke, dismisses it as a mere “slogan”.

It is the phrase - “our long term economic plan” – that you will be sick to the back teeth of hearing by election day, if you are not thoroughly bored of it already.

Sure enough, yesterday, George Osborne boasted about ‘Oltep’ no fewer than three times yesterday, in the Budget he hopes will bring Tory victory.

But the evidence is the Chancellor has had two economic plans since entering No.11 – and that he is now returning to the first, even though it is the second that is working.

Let’s go back to May 2010, when Mr Osborne arrived vowing to wipe out Labour’s whopping budget deficit - £150bn-odd, in 2009-10 – in a single parliament.

This would be achieved through massive spending cuts, that would somehow stimulate the private sector to fill the gap and ride to the rescue. It was definitely a long-term economic plan.

But, by the end of 2012, this bold austerity drive was in tatters, wrecked by a flatlining economy which meant deficit reduction was heading into reverse.

Mr Osborne’s response was to rip up his targets, by stretching the date for balancing the books all the way to 2018, adding up to nearly a decade of pain.

Now, most economists believe this was the correct decision and paved for the way for an economy which is now roaring ahead – but it is clearly nonsense to claim it is all part of the same plan.

Indeed, the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, said the first policy “knocked at least one per cent per year off growth in the first two years”.

My favourite explanation for the recovery was that Mr Osborne “stopped hitting Britain in the head with that baseball bat. And sure enough, the nation started feeling better”.

So what, you may say – the important thing is the future and at least the Chancellor has the right long-term economic plan now?

Well, there’s a strong case to be made that yesterday’s Budget confirmed that Mr Osborne is planning to return to his first long-term economic plan, the one that flopped.

Even after a tweak yesterday, the plan is for annual cuts of around £50bn, to wipe out that stubborn deficit by 2018 – steeper cuts than we have seen in this parliament.

“Such cuts would needlessly put the recovery at risk when global growth is slowing and interest rates are pinned near zero and would further savage departments that have already suffered.”

That’s not my verdict, but the one given by The Economist magazine, in an article entitled ‘Check your sums, guys!’.

It’s been a rocky ride, but Mr Osborne clearly has some good tales to tell – not least that the most painful squeeze on living standards anyone can remember may finally be over.

But set aside yesterday’s headline-grabbing help for first-time buyers and savers, the big story is still the staggering cuts planned by the Conservatives – nearly £40bn more than Labour.

And, at the very least, they expose the fiction that George has a single, infallible long-term economic plan.