Amid the growing mutterings over his suitability to be prime minister, Gordon Brown has managed to preserve his reputation in at least one quarter. It has become received wisdom that the Chancellor played a blinder on his first day in the job in 1997 by making the Bank of England independent, giving us perpetually low interest rates and bringing an end to boom and bust. Indeed, this is one Labour ‘success’ that David Cameron has promised to leave intact.
It is not hard to see why Gordon Brown has managed to portray himself as the genius who brought low, stable interest rates to Britain. To anyone over 40, the Brown years must seem a golden age of stable money. For 160 out of the 285 months between the end of the Barber boom in August 1973 and 1 May 1997, the Bank of England’s minimum lending rate stood above 10 per cent.
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