WHAT a difference a day makes … 24 little hours …”

So go the lines of the classic song recorded by Dinah Washington, soul legend Aretha Franklin and many, many others.

It would be a safe bet to assume that particular tune will not be featuring on George Osborne’s playlist this week following his latest budgetary chicanery on Wednesday.

Osborne may have felt a warm glow of satisfaction, or at least relief, as he absorbed the fawning plaudits of his cronies and peers following the announcement of his latest fiscal folly.

Meanwhile, however, everyone else was getting down to the business of working out what it all actually meant.

No easy task with this particular custodian of the Exchequer, for whom substance is merely something he used to abuse as a student while detail is an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs.

And the costs are, as always, considerable, especially if you happen to be disabled, poor or both.

Among the measures outlined were the further slashing of benefits, the forcible academisation of all of England’s schools and — in wonderful irony — the compulsory studying of mathematics by pupils up to the age of 18.

It’s difficult to tell exactly when the wheels came off on Wednesday.

When the party’s website was crashed by one of its own disabled supporters? Perhaps when the IFS said Osborne only had a 50/50 chance of meeting his targets?

Or possibly when John Humphries boldly asked him what it took for “a bloke like him to be sacked.”

Whatever the case, by lunchtime even someone as deluded as him must have realised that he’d got things spectacularly wrong, yet again.

This we were informed was supposed to be a “populist” Budget.

If that was the case Osborne must be the most unpopular populist of all time.