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| Ann Treneman, The Times Parliamentary Sketch, 19 December 2003 |
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The Chancellor received the very best Christmas present that he could imagine yesterday: the chance to talk about the economy for three entire hours. He started at 9.30am at the Commons Treasury Committee and then moved on to the harder stuff in the Chamber itself. He created an atmosphere of wild abandon and debauchery wherever he went, parading himself in fiscal drag and bragging boisterously about the output gap. Gordon Brown brought five of his wisest men in to the Select Committee meeting which took place in the Thatcher Room. They were all dressed in dark suits and looked, sitting in a row, so serious that it was almost funny. Each brought a huge amount of papers to show how important they were. Mr Brown's stack was beyond War and Peace levels. And they all were flaunting their specially signed copies of the Pre-Budget Report, which has been an instant bestseller this Christmas. 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? |
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| 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!" |
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| Mr Ruffley by now living up to his name, sniped back: "You don't know anything about public sector pay!" |
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| 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. |
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