Who is Gordon Brown?

A regular American contributor of comments on this Blog responded to my last post about UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown by confessing to knowing little about him, nor even having seen a photograph.

Gordon Brown acquired a good reputation early on as Tony Blair's Chancellor of the Exchequer and was well known for his frequent use of the word "prudence" to describe what drove his financial policies.

Unfortunately, on the other side of the coin (geddit?) he was driven by an overwhelming ambition to replace Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party and Prime Minister. In fact the story goes that when Blair was elected Leader he promised Brown that he would in due course make way for him at some stage. This made for a difficult (and sometimes imposssible) relationship between these two key men in government.

When Brown eventually realised his ambition last year he changed from the "Iron Chancellor" into the vaccilating Prime Minister, and also became haunted by some of the policies that he had been responsible for as Chancellor.

Some of his less savoury acts as Chancellor included imposing a tax regime that led to the near destruction of the insurance and pensions industry, and removing the financial incentives from the state of marriage.

He is the man who introduced a lower rate of income tax set at only 10p in the £ between the level of untaxed income and the level at which the normal rate of 22 pence applied, thus helping the lower paid. This is the same man who, bizarrely, last year slashed the normal rate of 22 pence to 20 pence (with a great fanfare) but at the same time abolished the 10 pence rate that he'd introduced a few years earlier. The result, this year, is that those of us who are reasonably well off are now better off, but those who are struggling are now worse off. (So much for the Labour Party being the party for working people and the disadvantaged.) The outcry within his own Party has been such that he has now been forced to promise some kind of refund for those who have suffered by the latest tax change.

After ten years of Labour Government the rich are richer, and the poor are poorer. We couldn't have asked for more from a typical Tory Government!