Gordon Brown’s chickens are coming home to roost

Almost all the Treasury’s current problems have their origins in the decade when Gordon Brown was Chancellor. His successor was always going to have a difficult time even before the credit crunch, Northern Rock and the 10p tax row erupted. The story is a mixture of the personal and the organisational. Mr Brown was an extraordinarily powerful Chancellor. Along with Ed Balls, his long-serving close adviser (and for a year a junior minister), he dominated the Treasury. Mr Balls was the policy gatekeeper. Civil servants knew that he was the key to influencing Mr Brown’s often slow process of decision-making. This had advantages, but it left many officials feeling excluded, and sucked energy and independence out of the department. So when the two departed in June last year, the head had been removed, while all the other ministers... [read full story]