The politics of Brown's Budget

The politics of Brown's Budget

Analysis By Nyta Mann BBC News Online political correspondent

Gordon Brown used to be the infallible chancellor, delivering his budgets with an Olympian arrogance that meant even Tony Blair would only be told of their details at the last minute.

Now he is a chancellor who makes mistakes, forced to admit he gets his sums wrong on how the economy will grow.

Still, Mr Brown's seventh Budget is the one that puts him in the record books as the longest serving post-war chancellor, and Labour's most successful holder of the post. But it is also his toughest challenge so far.

Last year, in a move that saw him hailed as a hero by Labour MPs delighted to see the unashamed return of tax-and-spend, he pre-announced a rise in National Insurance Contributions; it is only now going to hit voters' pay packets.

Hefty inflated council tax demands, up by 13% on average, have just landed on people's doormats.

And then there is Iraq to complicate matters - though the fog of war could also provide a useful smokescreen for uncomfortable news on the economic front.

Add to this the fact that in 2004 Mr Brown is due to set out another of his long-term spending reviews, plus the expectation of a general election the following year, and the stakes for this year's Budget climb yet higher.

Brown increasingly challenged

The stakes for Mr Brown's personal position are hardly lower. Colleagues and enemies alike feel freer to challenge and criticise the chancellor in a way few once dared - including the prime minister.

In the past few months Mr Brown has lost out in cabinet battles over health and education as an emboldened Tony Blair, increasingly certain of his own personal authority, has backed his ministers against his onetime mentor.

Meanwhile, students of Blair-Brown Kremlinology are still digesting the glimpse of a shift in the couple's dynamic from a newspaper columnist close to Number Ten.

In the course of the two men fixing a meeting recently, the chancellor tried to make Mr Blair come to see him in the Treasury - the kind of psycho-tactic Blairites regularly accuse Mr Brown of specialising in. In response, the prime minister barked down the phone: "No, you come over here. I'm the f***ing prime minister!"

History suggests that the underlying tensions of the Blair-Brown drama will not resolve themselves in Mr Brown's favour.

Only three post-war chancellors - Harold Macmillan, James Callaghan and John Major - have become prime minister, all three after the unexpected departure of the top man or woman.

Much also depends on the war and its aftermath.

If Mr Blair emerges well from a comparatively clean, quick conflict, his position strengthened and his critics in retreat, it is no longer inconceivable that he could try and move Mr Brown out of Number 11 - to, say, the Foreign Office.

The converse scenario is that if things turn out rather worse for Mr Blair, his position weakened after a military adventure he was warned against from virtually all quarters, he gives way to Mr Brown.

But either way, what is certain is that this year's Budget is the most important of Mr Brown's entire career - personally as well as politically.