What The National Papers Say About David
Santa Brown and the Five Wise Men
Ann Treneman, The Times, 19 December 2003
Gordon Brown brought five of his wisest men in to the Select Committee meeting which took place in the Thatcher Room. Mr Brown buried committee members under a tsunami of figures. He became particularly overexcited on the subject of debt, which is a trifling £10 billion above the forecast made in April. "The rise in numbers is completely explicable," he boomed.
Very few people can follow the Chancellor into these flurries.Tory MP David Ruffley, who looks and acts like an extremely clever boy, can. Mr Brown does not like this one bit. Yesterday Mr Ruffley asked a perfectly reasonable question about why more people are slipping into the higher tax bracket. When, for instance, would a teacher have to pay higher-rate tax?
Mr Brown hated this question. He had a flurry. Mr Ruffley persisted. Mr Brown resisted. We were in a Jeremy Paxman tussle for some time, with flurries reaching blizzard levels. Finally Mr Brown boomed: "Mr Ruffley, your case is collapsing!"
Mr Ruffley by now living up to his name, sniped back: "You don't know anything about public sector pay!"
Mr Brown's jaw muscles were working overtime and only relaxed when he was asked a nice soothing question about the New Deal and he could return to talking about his lovely fairytale.