WAS it a “budget for building” as George Osborne would have us believe? Was it a cocky Autumn statement complete with the customary joke about a new pothole fund? Was it surprisingly liberal since Holloway Prison will now finally close so female prisoners can be housed in smaller, more “humane” local surroundings?

Or was all of that knocked into a whopping great, ermine-lined cocked hat by the biggest victory for campaigners in years over the massive, no-holds-barred, egg on yer face, just plain wrong, policy in tatters that was Gideon’s U-turn on tax credits?

Honourable ladies and gentleman, I humbly suggest the latter. The only thing the Iron Chancellor got right about tax credit cuts was scrapping, not postponing or “tapering” them. And that was a bit of a surprise to everyone.

Of course they weren’t fair. Of course they hit the working poor – the very people Gideon endlessly professes to help with that tone of toe-curling insincerity. Of course the numbers didn’t stack up. The Resolution Foundation think tank (headed by former Tory minister David Willetts) calculated one million households would lose £1,350 a year and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (not traditionally friends of progressive thought) said it was “arithmetically impossible” there would be no losers despite Gideon’s claim his so-called national living wage (NLW) would come to the rescue.

But hey. What’s an unfair, unworkable, two-faced proposal among friends? Heavens ter Betsy, one rolls out of Whitehall almost every day. Tomorrow it will be the end of community energy schemes as tax reliefs and guaranteed tariffs are axed. Today it was news that “excess winter deaths” have reached their highest rate in 15 years. In plain language that means far more old people died last winter because of cold, flu and general frailty. The same winter peak isn’t found in the better insulated, healthier and more equal Nordic nations.

But at least tax credit cuts have been axed and that’s good news. Isn’t it?

Well, there’s no doubt Osborne’s tax credit U-turn is a tremendous victory for people power. The Tories’ disastrous victory in May and their cavalier disregard for well-argued Scotland Bill amendments since then have left many thinking Cameron and his crew are as unassailable as Maggie in her day. But the Lady who was “not for turning” would have joined CND and holidayed in Argentina before admitting she was wrong on a flagship policy like tax credits. Gideon’s climbdown means he will now breach the cap on public spending which he himself brought in last year. That’s gotta hurt.

However Osborne tries to massage the truth, his U-turn is a humiliating climbdown. It means a majority of 12 is not much of a majority at all. I’d hope it means Osborne has sufficiently blotted his copy book to be out of the leadership race to replace David Cameron – but then pigs might fly.

Above all the U-turn means people power actually worked. Campaigners got the media to focus on individual stories which translated the soon-to-be-lost cash into very tangible impacts like no holidays, no childcare and in many cases, no work. That put pressure on Tory MPs who in turn put the tin lid on tax credit cuts by speaking out on behalf of affected constituents in the Commons earlier this month.

It’s astonishing how quickly Cameron’s staunchest supporters will turn on his policies when they feel the heat in their own constituencies. There’s a lesson there for all of us.

It should also mean that if Osborne still intends to transform the UK into a low benefits, high wages, high productivity economy, he won’t be able to do it by cutting benefits first.

But there is the rub.

Much of his austerity agenda simply rolls on.

The UK Government’s National Living Wage still doesn’t come into effect until April, there’s still no guarantee the amount will keep rising, it still doesn’t apply to workers under the age of 25 – kinda tough since they’re also being hammered by the removal of housing benefit – and it still isn’t based on the real cost of living, but on a proportion of the median wage.

Earnings often lag behind prices so the UK Government’s NLW is currently £6.50 while the Scottish Government’s Living Wage (SLW) is £8.25.

Tax credits will still disappear – subsumed in the new levels of Universal Credit as new claimants of tax credits will discover.

And the whole austerity agenda remains.

As Robin McAlpine, director of Common Weal, puts it: “This just shows what happens when ideology gets out of control. I really don’t think Osborne understood the impact of tax credit cuts or how many people they would affect. “

But he’s given no hint of backtracking on benefits for the disabled, the unemployed, carers and so on because they don’t really vote.

It seems you can bash the really weak but not the slightly weak and you can bash the undeserving out-of-work poor but not the deserving in-work poor.”

It’s true – the Tories are still Tories.

But yesterday the massed forces of opposition landed a hit.

May it be the first of many.