The Brown legacy

(I am assuming that he will no longer be prime minister and chancellor after this coming Spring, a hope shared by virtually everyone I meet, even labour voters.)

The largest legacy will be the huge increase in both public sector and debt. Don't let him persuade you that the debt is due to the recession. It is in part, but he was overspending despite all the stealth taxes well bef0re the recession. It is difficult to envisage the size of the debt he has created, and wants to go on creating.

His debt will rob the next generation. If, as expected the national debt rises to something like £1.6 trillion (-£1,600 billion), then future taxpayers will have to find something like £64 billion annually to serve the accumulated debt (about two thirds accrued under Brown's stewardship.) If it is not reduced significantly that equates to something like a standard rate rate of tax 20 penceon its own, but then there all the other services t0o pay for.

Almost as serious are the cumulative failures to reform anything. Vast sums have been pumped into unreformed government departments, and some people like GPs have done very well out of the process, and into Quangos. So education, health, police and pensions are still produced in the same centralised way as in 1997, although they were sclerotic then!

In some ways this cash-consuming dinosaur is a bigger problem than the debt for anyone who seeks to drag this country into the 21st century and offer as much for each pound of tax as most other European countries do.