The bitterness of Brown sugar

Gordon Brown’s rhetoric in his tenth and presumably final pre-Budget report on Wednesday was as robust as his morning appearances on radio and television were reassuringly amiable.

Gordon Brown’s rhetoric in his tenth and presumably final pre-Budget report on Wednesday was as robust as his morning appearances on radio and television were reassuringly amiable. This was a Chancellor setting out his stall for the top job, presenting himself as a peerless custodian of the economy who can now be entrusted as custodian of the whole country. But his smiling confidence was misleading.

In his plans for the investment in and refurbishment of the nation’s schools, the Chancellor brought to mind the quip of a former head of the Tory research department, Rick Nye, that the failure of British education would not be solved by ‘throwing carpet tiles at the problem’. Yet that is precisely what the Chancellor promised. There is nothing wrong with better buildings and facilities for pupils, of course.